Your online data isn’t safe. Sensitive customer data, including personal details, credit card information, email addresses, and bank-account details are now stolen on a regular basis. Data breaches have become such a common occurrence that most people never hear about them. But which companies put your data at risk the most? The answers are telling.
Looking at individual data breaches, Money.co.uk found that breaches of Facebook and Yahoo databases have affected the most people in total. The 2018 hack of Facebook reportedly affected 2.2 billion people, which is considered the biggest ecommerce hack of all time. The 2013 Yahoo hack ranks second, with 1 billion users exposed.
These are not the only data breaches each service has suffered. The third-biggest hack of all time was Facebook again, in 2021, which exposed another 533 million users. And after that? You guessed it—the 2014 hack of Yahoo that exposed 500K users. Facebook was also hacked in 2014, which exposed a mere 50K users. Yahoo’s 2017 data breach exposed another 32K users.
Seeing all these data breaches grouped together shows how common they are for social-media sites: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Tumblr, among others, have all been hit before. Gamers have also been targeted, with the 2011 PlayStation Network hack, the 2013 Ubisoft hack, the 2011 Steam hack, and the recent Nintendo data breach in 2020.
Bit the company probably hit the hardest by data breaches is Amazon, which has suffered six in total with no clear indication as to how many customers have been affected. Customer data has been exposed multiple times over the years, and the recent fake reviews data leak shows how vulnerable AWS databases can be when not protected.
So what can we do to keep our data safe? While you can’t prevent a hack to a database you don’t control, you can do a few things to protect yourself. There are also tools that can tell you if one of your passwords has been stolen; be sure to change your password immediately in that case. Finally, if you are hacked, here’s what to do first.
