News of new data breaches splash across the headlines on a seemingly weekly, if not daily, basis. Marriott’s loss of personal information from around 500 million guests is the most recent and one of the most largest. But how does it stack up against others by sheer numbers? This Nextgov report provides that list, which is topped by the Yahoo breach in 2013 that saw 3 billion accounts hacked. Marriott’s hack, running from 2014-2018 ties for second place with another Yahoo hack from 2014 that both saw half a billion accounts hacked. From there, the list continues with Adult FriendFinder (2016, 412 million), MySpace (2016, 360 million), Under Armor (2018, 150 million), Equifax (2017, 145 million), Ebay (2014, 145 million), Target (2013, 110 million), Heartland Payment Systems (2008, 100+ million), and LinkedIn (2012, 100 million). The earliest breach on the list comes from 2004 when 92 accounts were compromised at AOL. In closing, the article asks, “as this list of history’s biggest hacks illustrates, no matter what you’re doing online – booking a hotel, looking for love, shopping, or checking your credit score – every time you put your information on the internet, you risk it going up for sale on the dark web.”
Source: The Biggest Data Breaches Of All Time, Ranked – Nextgov
