Yahoo Says Hackers Stole Data on 500 Million Users in 2014

[SeijiSensei]

The breach was incredibly extensive:

In a statement, Yahoo said user information — including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions — was compromised in 2014 by what it believed was a “state-sponsored actor.” It did not name the country involved.

Why have they waited two years to announce this? Do you suppose it was because Yahoo has been shopping itself around these last few years? I wonder if Verizon was informed about the breach before it offered $4.8 billion for Yahoo. Or it could be that hiding the breach would have endangered the deal and left Yahoo or its executives liable for withholding pertinent information about the company's financial position and possible future liabilities.

Whatever the reason, this looks to be the largest online breach in history, and one with horribly far-reaching implications.

I'm just glad I have all my email on a server that sits in my home office.

[monir]

Hah! I disabled my account last night. Should have done it when the last hack took place. Oh and, Marissa Mayer is THE worst, right alongside of Carly Fiorina when it comes to managing business. What's the chance she get some shit for it?

[Draco Spirit]

And we still have no idea on the whom and what there using it for.

[SeijiSensei]

I'm pretty suspicious of the foreign-government claim myself. The Russians and Chinese seem more interested in documents and dossiers than user accounts. For instance, the break-in at the Federal Office of Personnel Management appeared to target files pertaining to security clearances.

Some of the follow-up coverage suggests that data from the Yahoo breach were appearing on underground sites that deal in identity theft. That seems like a much more plausible motive to me. I'm guessing Yahoo was trying to use the recent breaches at the DNC as a distraction in the hope that people would see this as an attack by sophisticated hackers, not guys trying to sell credit-card numbers at $1 per.

[Infinite Zenith]

I changed my password a year later, after AnimeSuki was compromised. I don't use Yahoo extensively, so I should be safe.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by monir

Hah! I disabled my account last night. Should have done it when the last hack took place. Oh and, Marissa Mayer is THE worst, right alongside of Carly Fiorina when it comes to managing business. What's the chance she get some shit for it?

There are plenty of business leaders who commented that she got the place through feminist movements rather than real capability, and given her history of shitty acquisitions, I am not surprised.

Besides Yahoo is failing (except in Japan, for some reason). Don't think they can last any longer than they should.

[SeijiSensei]

There have been lots of incompetent men at the top of large corporations, too. Attributing Mayer's success to her gender is the sort of misogyny that seems unfortunately all too common these days. I find a lot to admire in modern young people, but I hear way too much whining from men about how women are advanced just because of their gender.

You don't need to look much further than John G. Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo, for a good example.

[frivolity]

To be precise, the comment isn't so much about her gender, but about the cultural movement that favours women. There are lots of terrible CEOs in all sorts of companies - both men and women - and there will be lots of speculation about how these people got their jobs. If Mayer were a guy, the same critics would be making comments about some other aspect of her (his) profile, and attributing success to that.

[SeijiSensei]

Perhaps, but the knee-jerk claim about female leaders almost always credits their success to their gender rather than their competence or lack thereof.

I wonder how many of you have children, and especially how many of you have daughters? If she goes on to achieve success, will you still be crediting her advancement to her gender?

I was thinking the other day about the absence of women from threads like the one on the election and, apparently, this one as well. Perhaps women just get tired of having to defend their gender against the constant barrage of sexist claptrap that seems so common among younger men who participate in online forums.

[frivolity]

I haven't had the privilege of having children yet, but I wouldn't credit a woman's success to her gender, nor would I credit a minority person's success to racial affirmative action, nor attribute a person's success to being part of a certain demographic. Conversely, I also would not discredit the success of a male as being due to his gender, or a caucasian person's success as being due to race.

My approach in general is to evaluate each individual on his or her own merits regardless of his or her gender, race, orientation, etc. Just as I wouldn't disregard a gay black/hispanic/asian female on the basis of attributes that she was born with, I also wouldn't disregard a straight white male for attributes that he was born with.

If I read about a successful person, the first thing I'll look at isn't how "privileged" he/she is. I will instead laud him/her for the good decisions that the person made in life in order to get to where he/she is, and hopefully learn something that I can apply to my own life. And if I see someone who has fallen on hard times, the first thing I look at isn't his/her gender/race/orientation, but the decisions that he/she made, in order to see whether the person failed as a result of poor decision-making, or whether it was simply bad luck. I've fallen on hard times too in the past and I too spent some time blaming the system, but this experience convinced me that the only way to not be a permanent failure is to take responsibility and make good decisions instead of calling the system rigged.

My view on the critics who bring up other's gender/race/orientation without knowing anything about the person they criticise is that these are people who will try to bring others down by referring to anything and everything, no matter how irrelevant any such factors may be. This applies to both sides - from the ones who are true bigots, to those who act like professional victims claiming that someone only achieved something due to the privilege that they were born with. They're ignorant people whose drivel is simply not worth listening to.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by frivolity

I haven't had the privilege of having children yet, but I wouldn't credit a woman's success to her gender, nor would I credit a minority person's success to racial affirmative action, nor attribute a person's success to being part of a certain demographic.

I hope you didn't think I was saying anything about you, frivolity. I responded to the comment from Saintess, which claimed that unnamed "business leaders" think she got her position because of her gender. I wonder how many of those "business leaders" were themselves women. I doubt very many.