Once-relevant Internet firm Yahoo announced some bad news on Thursday.
Info on 500 million accounts stolen from Yahoo by "state-sponsored actor" in 2014 https://t.co/nyWDqwbl8v pic.twitter.com/1CIiKvRHjy
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) September 22, 2016
Oh boy.
“The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords…and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers,” Yahoo said in a statement.
It’s an embarrassing blow for already-floundering Yahoo, which was recently bought by Verizon for a bargain-basement $4.8 billion. Critics are wondering if the company’s reckless splurging — spending hundreds of millions to hire former celebrities such as Katie Couric ($10 million/year), failed programming such as the undead Community ($42 million lost), free NFL live streaming (a gazillion dollars), and buying flailing CEO Marissa Mayer to the seat of honor at the prestigious Met Ball dinner (priceless) — meant that customer privacy and security was being neglected.
Following the Verizon acquisition, many have speculated that novelty employees like Couric, who is currently being sued for defamation by a group of Virginia gun activists who were misleadingly edited in her controversial documentary Under The Gun, would be on the chopping block. Some have wonder whether Couric’s reckless editorial decisions were the result of her spending too much time schmoozing with millionaire chums in the Hamptons.
