To: marissa mayer, CEO of Yahoo
Iranians need not apply
Dear Yahoo, please restore the ability of people in Iran to create email accounts.
Why is this important?
Yahoo is making access to secure and reliable email more difficult for Iranians. How? Yahoo has decided to not allow people in Iran to create new email accounts simply because of where they live.
Iran is facing unprecedented sanctions, but essential services like free email accounts have long been exempt from those laws.* No matter where you stand on the effectiveness of the Iran sanctions, those laws don't apply here. The White House and State Department have made clear that it is important to ensure sanctions do not disrupt Iranians' access to online communications.That's why they exempted the technology from sanctions in the first place.
For many of us in the US who use services such as Gmail or Hotmail, not having access to Yahoo may not seem like a big deal. However, Yahoo is the most popular email service in Iran and over 63% of Iranians use Yahoo as their primary email provider.* This unnecessary move by Yahoo to limit access may force many Iranians to use insecure and less-stable government Internet communications services – essentially the local equivalent of an NSA-run email service. Safe and reliable email services is something we need everyone to have access to.
We know our voices matter to Yahoo because Yahoo executives have been responsive to these kinds of campaigns before. Last year, after a prolonged campaign, Yahoo agreed to turn on HTTPS encryption by default, which made its email service far more secure for everyone.
Especially now, after the NSA scandal, Yahoo cares about what people like us think about them more than ever. In a recent speech, Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, said that, as a company, Yahoo needs to “rebuild trust with our users.” We need to remind Yahoo that the trust it needs to rebuild isn’t just with users in the US, but all potential users around the globe. And that Yahoo’s stated commitment to Internet security needs to extend to all its users - no matter what country they’re from.
Technology is a tool that makes it infinitely easier for people from all over the world to share their hopes, stories and dreams together. Now that the United States and Iranian governments are talking to each other after decades, we need to raise our voices to ensure that every day citizens can have that same privilege too.
Iran is facing unprecedented sanctions, but essential services like free email accounts have long been exempt from those laws.* No matter where you stand on the effectiveness of the Iran sanctions, those laws don't apply here. The White House and State Department have made clear that it is important to ensure sanctions do not disrupt Iranians' access to online communications.That's why they exempted the technology from sanctions in the first place.
For many of us in the US who use services such as Gmail or Hotmail, not having access to Yahoo may not seem like a big deal. However, Yahoo is the most popular email service in Iran and over 63% of Iranians use Yahoo as their primary email provider.* This unnecessary move by Yahoo to limit access may force many Iranians to use insecure and less-stable government Internet communications services – essentially the local equivalent of an NSA-run email service. Safe and reliable email services is something we need everyone to have access to.
We know our voices matter to Yahoo because Yahoo executives have been responsive to these kinds of campaigns before. Last year, after a prolonged campaign, Yahoo agreed to turn on HTTPS encryption by default, which made its email service far more secure for everyone.
Especially now, after the NSA scandal, Yahoo cares about what people like us think about them more than ever. In a recent speech, Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, said that, as a company, Yahoo needs to “rebuild trust with our users.” We need to remind Yahoo that the trust it needs to rebuild isn’t just with users in the US, but all potential users around the globe. And that Yahoo’s stated commitment to Internet security needs to extend to all its users - no matter what country they’re from.
Technology is a tool that makes it infinitely easier for people from all over the world to share their hopes, stories and dreams together. Now that the United States and Iranian governments are talking to each other after decades, we need to raise our voices to ensure that every day citizens can have that same privilege too.