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by ezraroi 4783 days ago
Wow.... i can't imagine what if something like this will happen to Google or Facebook. If it happened to Yahoo, why not to them?
3 comments

Yahoo! Japan is an entity separate from Yahoo!. It is a joint venture between Yahoo! and SoftBank (a Japanese telecom).

And to put this in context, IT in Japan is about a decade behind the West.

What you're stating is a gross generalization and untrue in a literal sense (probably easy to realize if you remember how things were a decade ago).

While Y!J and Y!Inc are separate entities, the former does borrow/use technology from the former and some of the Y!J services use Y!Inc servers and/or services maintained by Y!Inc.

Y!J user ids are completely separate from Y!Inc though (Y!Inc ids are shared through out the Y! locales).

It's been almost a decade since I was at Y!J, but from what I understand Y!J does continue to leverage the Y!Inc relationship for services and servers.

Additionally, simply stating that old technology is the reason for a security breach could be a red herring, it isn't always the age of the technology but how it is implemented.

This is a gross generalization.

Sure, plenty of companies are behind. But quite a few are too in the US... http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_...

I'm also not sure that "new" means more secure in this kind of context either. LinkedIn ain't exactly ancient and had a similar breach last year.

I would characterize the comment as more like "Attitudes towards development practices are a decade behind" (rather that the tech itself necessarily) which sounds pretty accurate[1] for most Japanese companies that are not part of the newer "Gree" wave.

[1] Anecdotal data etc etc.

Hopefully the newer generation of companies (GREE, DeNA, Line, etc) will change the way things are, acting as a catalyst.
There are definitely a lot of opportunities for innovation in Japan. This excellent post by a co-founder of MakeLeaps, an invoicing startup founded by gaijin, covers some of the difficulties (and opportunities): http://www.makeleaps.jp/blog/en/2012/05/everything-ive-learn...
I was under the impression that Yahoo Japan and Yahoo are distinct entities. Do the two services actually share common infrastructure?
Yes, they share some common infrastructure.
It's happened to both. Normally this doesn't get out and is the result of a phishing scam.