$50 million to settle Yahoo breach
Yahoo has agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide two years of free credit-monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen as part of the biggest security breach in history.
The restitution hinges on federal court approval of a settlement filed late Monday in a 2-year-old lawsuit seeking to hold Yahoo accountable for digital burglaries that occurred in 2013 and 2014, but weren’t disclosed until 2016.
It adds to the financial fallout from a security lapse that provided a mortifying end to Yahoo’s existence as an independent company and former CEO Marissa Mayer’s six-year reign.
Yahoo revealed the problem after it had already negotiated a $4.83 billion deal to sell its digital services to Verizon Communications. It then had to discount that price by $350 million to reflect its tarnished name and other potential costs of the breach.
Verizon will now pay for one half of the settlement cost, with the other half paid by Altaba Inc., a company set up to hold Yahoo’s investments in Asian companies and other assets. Altaba already paid a $35 million fine imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the delay in disclosing the breach.
About 3 billion Yahoo accounts were hit by hackers that included some linked to Russia by the FBI. The settlement reached in federal court in San Jose covers about 1 billion of those accounts held by an estimated 200 million people in the U.S. and Israel from 2012 through 2016.
Claims for a portion of the $50 million fund can be submitted by any eligible Yahoo account holder who suffered losses resulting from the security breach. The costs can include such things as identity theft, delayed tax refunds or other problems linked to having personal information pilfered by hackers.
The fund will compensate Yahoo account holders at a rate of $25 per hour for time spent dealing with issues arising from the security breach, according to the preliminary settlement. Those with documented losses can ask for up to 15 hours of lost time, or $375. Those who can’t document losses can file claims seeking up to five hours, or $125, for their time spent dealing with the breach.
Yahoo account holders who paid $20 to $50 annually for a premium email account will be eligible for a 25 percent refund.
The free credit monitoring service from AllClear could end up being the most valuable part of the settlement. The lawyers representing the account holders pegged the retail value of AllClear’s credit-monitoring service at $15 per month.
The lawyers for Yahoo’s account holders praised the settlement, given the uncertainty of what might have happened had the case headed to trial.
Estimates of damages caused by security breaches vary widely, with experts asserting the value of personal information held in email accounts can range from $1 to $8 per account. Those figures suggest Yahoo could have faced a bill of more than $1 billion had it lost the case.
A hearing to approve the preliminary settlement is scheduled for Nov. 29 before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose. If approved, notices will be emailed to affected account holders and published in People and National Geographic magazines.