500 million Yahoo accounts hacked by "state agent" in 2014
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NY Times breaking: "In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved." [^] It will be interesting to see if this affect the current possible sale negotiations between Verizon and Yahoo. imho, it also raises a question about why we are finding this out now. Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
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NY Times breaking: "In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved." [^] It will be interesting to see if this affect the current possible sale negotiations between Verizon and Yahoo. imho, it also raises a question about why we are finding this out now. Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
Oh no!!! They got all my incoming SPAM!!!!!! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
My book, Launch Your Android App, is available at Amazon.com.
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NY Times breaking: "In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved." [^] It will be interesting to see if this affect the current possible sale negotiations between Verizon and Yahoo. imho, it also raises a question about why we are finding this out now. Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
Not sure what's worse, they covered it up for two years because they wanted to look good to potential buyers, but some disgruntled ex-employee spilled the beans. or They didn't even know for two years.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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NY Times breaking: "In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved." [^] It will be interesting to see if this affect the current possible sale negotiations between Verizon and Yahoo. imho, it also raises a question about why we are finding this out now. Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
I don't consider it a big deal as the passwords were hashes (per reuters[^]) and the remaining data is more or less stuff you can find on spokeo or related websites. The negotiations are complete and I don't see Verizon backing out, but I could be wrong. Verizon is buying Yahoo for advertising and competitive leverage, not for the junky web portal. 4.83 billion for Yahoo Core is pretty cheap if you consider they are in the top 5 visited websites in the world. I am biased as my junk email service is through them, but more importantly, I've owned shares in YHOO for 2.5 years now. They own 15% of Alibaba and back then, it was the only way you could get your hands on it.
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NY Times breaking: "In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved." [^] It will be interesting to see if this affect the current possible sale negotiations between Verizon and Yahoo. imho, it also raises a question about why we are finding this out now. Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
BillWoodruff wrote:
Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
Have you been living under a rock? Although they are less successful in the west... Yahoo has massive penetration into many Asian-Pacific countries. In the last decade Yahoo had a much larger Asian presence than most other U.S. tech firms... including Microsoft and Google. Some countries such as Vietnam at one point had extremely high percentages of their population exclusively using yahoo.com email accounts. Much of that success is slowly eroding away over time. Best Wishes, -David Delaune
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NY Times breaking: "In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved." [^] It will be interesting to see if this affect the current possible sale negotiations between Verizon and Yahoo. imho, it also raises a question about why we are finding this out now. Note: I mis-read the article as saying 500k accounts were hacked, perhaps because I couldn't imagine Yahoo having 500 million users. I still have trouble believing that.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
We all know accounts are not users. How many people have abandoned accounts where spam took over? Of more interest to me, AT&T uses Yahoo! as the Internet portal for their Internet and Mobile account holders. Is AT&T allowing Verizon to take over responsibility for its accounts without a qualm?