2. Yahoo
When: 2014
Number of accounts affected: 500 million
And now we finally get to the worst place to keep your data, it seems – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). At the end of September 2016, not too long ago, a huge data breach at Yahoo was revealed, the biggest on record at the time. It all happened in the middle of the deal with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), which had agreed to acquire Yahoo’s core business, making it pretty difficult for Yahoo’s higher ups to explain the situation, we’re sure.
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It seems the data breach took place in 2014 and the collection of data available out there includes real names, email addresses, birthdays, telephone numbers and more, which is all very helpful to those who want to spam your account and maybe even send you a few phishing emails. The good news in this entire situation was that the passwords were hashed, which made them uncrackable through usual methods.
The company has blamed a “state-sponsored actor” without giving any actual names or even a direction to its accusations. The situation was so dire that even the FBI got involved, vowing to investigate the matter.
Again, it’s not like Yahoo’s stock was doing very well in the first place, but you’d think that with 500 million users affected by this data breach, the investors would get spooked. However, the company’s stock price barely went down a few bucks before recovering.
And now, let’s see the number one in our list of biggest data breaches of all time.
