Three billion reasons to ditch Yahoo

Yahoo has admitted that all three billion user accounts were hacked in August 2013 in the biggest data theft in history.

The company, which had previously said one billion users had been hacked, updated the figure after obtaining new information “following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts”.

It means that anyone with a Yahoo email account would have had their details exposed.

In December 2016, Yahoo said that hackers had stolen names, email addresses, encrypted passwords, birthdays and phone numbers. It has now confirmed that no credit-card and bank details were stolen, nor unencrypted passwords.

At the time the company told affected users to change their password. It also invalidated security questions and answers that weren’t encrypted so hackers couldn’t use them. In a new statement ( www.snipca.com/25866) Yahoo said it will email the additional two billion users about the hack.

Yahoo’s admission opens the door for thousands more court cases against the company. It already faces 41 class-action lawsuits in the US brought by victims of the hack.

Earlier this year, lawyer John Yanchunis, representing some of the affected users, said a judge had asked for more information to justify the claims against Yahoo. “I think we have those facts now,” he said, adding that the scale of the attack is “really mind-numbing”.