Your privacy: Verizon's takeover of Yahoo is all about user data

Verizon Communications and Yahoo have come to terms on the telecom giant’s takeover of the seen-better-days Internet company. Now, millions of Yahoo users have something else to consider: Verizon’s aggressive use of customer information.

Put simply, if you think Yahoo played fast and loose with people’s privacy, wait until you see what’s in store from the new owner.

Verizon and Yahoo announced this week that they’d agreed to shave $350 million off Yahoo’s $4.8 billion asking price to reflect huge security breaches that affected the accounts of more than 1 billion Yahoo users. Verizon said that, despite Yahoo’s seeming inability to safeguard customer data, “this acquisition makes strategic sense.”

Here’s why: The more information Verizon can amass about people’s online behavior and activities, the more it can compete with the likes of Google and Facebook in leveraging that info with marketers.

For Yahoo users, that’s a polite way of saying the company looks forward to selling you out.