In this cyber age, a number of companies have access to confidential data of their users. You may have noticed that as soon as you sign up for a website, it assures you that your data will be in safe hands. Despite such an assurance, your personal data is at a constant risk of being exposed by cyber criminals. This means that a number of incidents have taken place wherein hackers have gotten into the servers of cyber companies and have stolen user data for various purposes. This not only threatens the privacy of the users but also the authenticity of the companies. A similar incident happened with a major internet giant which resulted in the Yahoo lawsuit.
The search giant Yahoo has faced two major data breaches which shook up its market value altogether. Due to such massive incidents, even users from across the world lost faith in the company. This was mainly because of the fact that if they interacted with the company’s server in any manner, then their personal data was at risk. This gradually brought down the popularity of the company as well. Following this was the sale of Yahoo which happened at a much lower rate than it must have. All in all, it not only affected the company but also billions of its users.
Yahoo lawsuit still intact
In the three data breach incidents faced by the company, the personal data of over one billion users were out in the open. This means that the data of these people might be misused any moment and they won’t even be aware of it. This puts more than a billion people under the risk of cyber crime. These breaches took place within the span of three years that is from 2013 to 2016. The last one was announced in December last year wherein data of 50 million people was stolen.
Initially, Yahoo tried to keep these incidents under wraps but they were brought out after months. This clearly signifies that the company was not loyal to its customers. The announcement of the last data breach was close to the sale of the company. This is why Verizon ended up buying this company just at $4.76 billion. Apart from this, the U.S. Court has clearly rejected the plea to dismiss the Yahoo lawsuit. The judge stated that the users could even sue the company for such an act. The lawsuit is still on as it is one of the biggest data breaches in the world. This decision will warn other companies to be more careful of their data.
