During a hacker attack information has been stolen 500 million Yahoo users, about half of the company's customers. The fact dates back to the end of 2014 but was confirmed only yesterday by the group. This is the largest data theft ever admitted by a multinational company in the history of the internet.
THEFBI has opened an investigation: the suspicion is that the hackers were in the pay of a foreign state and the main suspects are Russia and China.
The company said they were hacked passwords, emails, names, dates of birth and also “unencrypted security questions and answers”. Among the stolen data however, there is no financial information and this relieves the company of the obligation to contact each individual customer to offer credit monitoring services.
In any case, in terms of image it is another blow for Yahoo. The news of the maxi theft, moreover, could have consequences on theongoing deal with Verizon, the American communications giant which last July put 4,8 billion dollars on the plate for Yahoo assets which include – among others – the email service, the Flickr image platform and the Tumblr blog.
Yahoo has advised all its users to change your password, in case they haven't done it since 2014. However, many object that this is an insufficient and, certainly, late countermeasure.
