This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the
article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
In late September, Yahoo announced that at least 500 million user accounts had been compromised. The data stolen included users’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords, but not credit card data. Large data breaches have become increasingly common: Just in 2016 we have found out about Yahoo’s breach as well as the LinkedIn hack (compromising 167 million accounts) and the MySpace breach (360 million accounts).
The Yahoo breach affected more users than the other two, but all of them share a crucial element: They were announced to the public years after the fact. The LinkedIn hack happened in 2012, MySpace was breached in 2013 and Yahoo was hacked in 2014. Not until 2016 did users of the three sites found out their information had been stolen. https://www.livescience.com/56345-why-yahoo-disclosed-security-breach-so-late.html
