5.4 Billion Accounts Hacked Since 2012

5.4 Billion Accounts Hacked - Top Tips for Online Security

Notably, in 2012, Dropbox and LinkedIn were infamously massively hacked. Shockingly, as reported by The Scope Weekly, LinkedIn chose not to reveal the hack until  May 2016.  Just this year so far, Aadhaar, India’s giant public database was compromised on January 3, and this week, Canada giant telecom Bell Media reported that nearly 100,000 customers have had their private information accessed by hackers, making it the second hack for the company within a year span.

And let’s not forget that during the last week of 2017, NiceHash, a Bitcoin mining company was hacked for nearly 70 million.

The Scope Weekly consulted with online security experts vpnMentor on how the how the public can protect themselves and they provided us with the infographic featured today.

Some of the most wide-reaching cyber attacks include:

2012-13 Yahoo! – One of the biggest personal data breaches ever, the Yahoo hack reported 3 billion accounts compromised. Data breached included names, email addresses, hashed passwords and even, security questions and answers.

2016 Uber – Announced in November 2017, Uber was the victim of a cyber attack in which hackers stole the personal data of over 57 million drivers and riders. Instead of informing authorities, the company paid hackers to hide the attack.

2017 Equifax – A cyber attack on the credit scoring company Equifax seized up to 143 million names, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license information, as well as credit card details.

Hack of all time
infographic provided by vpnmentor.com/

Ransomware Attacks

Another source of concerns is ransomware attacks. A few months ago, The Scope Weekly spoke with Teryl Burt, author of I Don’t Speak Geek and co-founder with her sister Gloria and brother Herb Burt of Bay-area TSG Networks, an IT support company focusing on cloud computing, and they made recommendations on how to best protect your business against such occurrences.

Burt said to The Scope Weekly,

“The first thing to do is unplug your computer from the internet so it does not infect other users on the network, and report the crime to law enforcement.Then promptly contact technology professionals who specialize in data recovery and data protection.”

Read TSG Networks‘ list of best practices here.

Update: January 24, 4 PM. We initially incorrectly reported that Carphone Warehouse had been hacked this month. The company has been fined but not hacked this month.


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