Worldwide, the Verizon-owned Yahoo has three billion account holders who use the company’s various web services, such as email, news offerings, web portal, and forums.
The problem is that for years those users’ personal information was exposed without anyone telling them — even, perhaps, without Yahoo realizing the company had been hacked. The pioneering internet company, founded in 1994, encountered data breaches in 2013 and 2014 that it did not report until late 2016 and early 2017.
If you’re a Yahoo user, that means you were likely one of the affected parties.
The announcements about the data breachesstarted coming in late 2016.
In September of that year, Yahoo announced that hackers stole 500 million users’ data in 2014. The information included names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, and passwords. In other words, it was enough data to put people at risk of a form of identity theft.
The shocking news had a sequel when a few months later the company announced that a full one billion users’ information was stolen in August 2013. Experts anticipated the Yahoo data breaches could lead to further hacking, considering the depth and breadth of the data leak.
After that second announcement, Morgan & Morgan attorneys filed a negligence lawsuit against Yahoo for both failing to protect consumer data and failing to inform them of the breaches. In February 2017, Morgan & Morgan gained the lead counsel spot.
But the story wasn’t over. In October 2017 Yahoo announced that every single one of its users’ accounts was exposed in the 2013 hack — three billion in all.