It looks like Yahoo collaborated with Iran during the election protests, releasing 200,000 email addresses and names of people who have or had blogs. When Iranians protested on the streets, the authorities blocked or restricted access to many Internet sites, including Yahoo and Google. While Google’s problem was solved in less than 48 hours, Yahoo representatives had to meet with Iranian authorities. “During the meeting with Iranian Internet authorities and telecommunications authorities, Yahoo representatives were asked to provide Iranian authorities with the names (data) on all Iranian Internet account holders in exchange for removing the block/filter on the Yahoo website.” – taken from an Iranian post.

Since the list would have been too large (over 20 million accounts), Iran “replied by asking the representative to provide email accounts of those individuals who have Yahoo accounts and are publishing blogs.” If this is true, Yahoo will loose a lot of credibility and a lot of users. At this time, the company states: “The allegations in the story are false. Neither Yahoo! nor any Yahoo! representative has met with or communicated with any Iranian officials, and Yahoo! has not disclosed user data to the Iranian government.” We sure hope so! Otherwise, what’s next? China?