It’s been reported that a number of Yahoo! accounts belonging to journalists and those involved in activist groups related to China have been hacked into over the last month.
The news comes just days after Google announced it is planning to remove its Chinese language search services from China because of a spate of cyber-attacks and concerns over censorship. Google has now redirected its search engine enquiries offshore to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
Some journalists and an analyst have reported not being able to access their accounts for several weeks. When they tried to log-in, they were faced with a message which told them to contact Yahoo! as a problem had been detected with their account. When access had been regained, many have noticed that their accounts have been set to forward onto another unknown account.
Exile group World Uygur Congress say their Yahoo! account has been inaccessible for over a month. A spokesperson for the group says the organisation believes information from its account has been downloaded.
Yahoo engineers restored the access of one of the journalist’s accounts, but couldn’t confirm if the other problems affecting the accounts of the other journalists was related.
It’s not known whether Yahoo will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the problems affecting Yahoo accounts of selected individuals in China.
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