Yahoo Announces Hack Bigger Than Equifax
New Yahoo e-mail owners Verizon, announced today that they have determined the Yahoo hacking of e-mail accounts in 2013 was not limited as the original Yahoo owners had led everyone to believe.
Instead of being under 1 Billion as originally announced in 2013/2014, today's announcement suggests that every account holder was hacked, at at least 3 Billion e-mail accounts.
If you have a Yahoo Account, you may recall that Yahoo's former owners initially delayed publishing or releasing the information. E-mail users were simply told to change their passwords. No new updates or details. It seemed pretty insignificant based on the tone and approach Yahoo's then owners took in delivering the delayed news to the customers.
It's quite mind numbing that Yahoo (now owned by Verizon) is releasing the facts that its entire database was hacked affecting over 3 Billion accounts. Four years have already passed and many Yahoo account holders are only now being told that their accounts were included in the breach.
If you are like most e-mail users, your exposed data includes your financial transactions, account details, photos, passwords, possibly your real name, address and phone number and personal details shared through their e-mail service everyday.
So why did Yahoo cover it up? What incentive did Yahoo have as a company to delay the revelation regarding the additional 2 Billion e-mail account holders, many of whom no longer hold e-mail accounts at Yahoo and whom Yahoo is unable to contact for that reason?
Oh, yes, that's it. Yahoo's CEO, Executives and Investors were trying to dump Yahoo and sell off it's various parts to the highest bidder. That means, it was not in their best financial interest to release the real details of the magnitude of their hack which is comparable to the 2017 Equifax hack.
Though Verizon now owns Yahoo, it seems appropriate that a congressional investigation should be launched or relaunched for the behavior and actions of Yahoo's former leaders, investors and owners.
Even though Yahoo email is free in the sense that users who did not upgrade to paid accounts didn't pay to use the service, Yahoo heavily places advertisements throughout its e-mail pages and even on received e-mails to pay for those services on the users behalf. More importantly, Yahoo breached public trust by its initial 2013 delay and now the lack of transparency comes out as being even greater four years later.
Hopefully, if you previously used Yahoo or continued to use Yahoo's e-mail services after the initial breach in 2013, you took steps to change passwords on all of your other online accounts, changed any connected bank accounts you may have received e-mail communications from, and placed a Freeze on your credit card accounts if you made purchases on Yahoo or associated with your Yahoo e-mail address. If you didn't it might be worth considering doing now. Your information has now had four years to filter its way through the Dark Web for sale to the highest bidder. You may think its to late, but this is actually the time that information purchased on the Dark Web often begins to get used. Why? Because any previous credit card account freezes or identity theft services Yahoo e-mail account users may have purchased are most if not all expired.
Their is no excuse for this. Yahoo's former owners had one intention and only one intention. Had it announced that all 3 Billion of its e-mail accounts were hacked prior to the completion of its sale to Verizon, its e-mail product would have completely collapsed and not been worth the price of the web domain name.
I suspect and honestly hope to see at least a few class-action lawsuits against the original Yahoo Investors and Leadership who covered it up prior to Verizon's acquisition.