Back in 2016, troubling news that Russian hackers had breached over 1 billion Yahoo! accounts in 2013. The Justice Department indicted those responsible for the attacks, and everyone not affected went back to being thankful they were Gmail users. However, according to a new report, those numbers were not quite accurate.
According to CNN, the data breach affected every single Yahoo! account, including email, Tumblr, and Flickr, putting the number of those affected at 3 billion. Names, email addresses, and passwords were obtained, but no financial information was leaked.
This new information was found after Verizon purchased Yahoo!, merging it with AOL to form Oath. Verizon issued a statement, saying .”The company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft.” Oath spokesman Charles Stewart did not clarify how the new data was obtained, but the security team conducted a deep dive investigation a week ago.
Following the discovery of the data breach last year, Yahoo! required affected users (the ones they know about) to change their passwords and security questions. They will be sending out emails to the rest of the affected accounts, but it’s safe to say that it is beyond time to update your information.