Gone are the days when securing your PC alone saves you from data breaches. Nowadays you need a security suite that would help guard all your devices from your PC, to your iPad/Tablet and your smartphones.
Major data breaches that have occurred in recent times and left users vulnerable have occurred online on internet websites that we are all too familiar with. Your personal information can be put at risk if you don’t take the necessary steps to safeguard your devices and your PC most especially. For example, you may check Norton antivirus free.
Run the basic check to see if your system is okay.
In the last decade incidents of data breaches have reached an all-time high. However, most security outfits remain silent and try to downplay the effect of these breaches whether big or small. In the next few paragraphs we would be giving examples of major breaches that have occurred recently.
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YAHOO, 2014
In 2014, Yahoo was the target of a serious data breach where over 500 million user accounts were affected. It was reported in the aftermath of the hack that user information such as email addresses, names, mobile number, passwords and date of birth might have been stolen. Some even suggest that encrypted security questions were also stolen.
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FRIENDFINDER, 2016
Regarded as one of the largest security breaches to ever occur, the FriendFinder hack of 2016 exposed huge volumes of data that were related to over 400 million accounts. According to an anonymous source, the data stolen could not be retrieved from the main page of the website for a while.
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LINKEDIN, 2012
In 2012, LinkedIn was the victim of a serious hack that resulted in the loss of close to 200 million user accounts. A large chunk of the account had unique email addresses, while the rest comprised of only numerical user Identification and passwords.
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ADOBE SYSTEMS, 2013
At the time the Adobe hack was largely considered as one of the biggest hacks in American history, over 152 million username and passwords were compromised. Adobe tried to downplay the effect of the hack claiming just a little over 3 million accounts were affected, but later on went on record to say the figure had risen to about 38 million. However, in reality the number was a lot higher than that and information stolen included “encrypted” credit card details.
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EBAY, 2014
The eBay data breach of 2014 affected as much as 145 million users. The hackers were able to gain access to email and password of all user accounts on eBay’s platform. After the hack occurred eBay had to inform users to reset their passwords.
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RAMBLER, 2012
Rambler.ru is arguably one of the biggest websites in the world. It provides news, ads, email and search. Let’s just say it is the Russian version of Yahoo. With close to 100 million user accounts in its database, which includes email addresses, usernames, passwords and social account data affected. However unlike the conventional ways of storing passwords in encrypted formats, theirs was stored in plain text which meant anyone with access could view the passwords.
In summary, getting hacked is becoming hugely popular and this is a major inconvenience for most people. Ensure you take the necessary steps to guard yourself from these hacks by going for a security package that protects you from such risks.