Web Services Provider Yahoo has accepted that over the years, hackers gained access to user accounts who used Yahoo mail. There were three cyberattacks that were reported where hackers stole from private emails, calendars and contacts. Now, those who had a Yahoo account and lost data between 2012 and 2016 can claim compensation by participating in a class action settlement. 

Yahoo faces a security breach

There were two attacks on the cybersecurity that were reported in 2012, Yahoo claimed no loss of data. Later in 2013, the hackers were able to access all data belonging to approximately 3 billion Yahoo accounts. The cyber theft included stealing the names, email addresses, birth dates, telephone phones and all the other personal information. The hackers also had access to personal passwords of customers. However, if an individual had a Yahoo account between the time period of Jan 1, 2012, and December 31, 2016 and resides in either the US or Israel then they can participate in the settlement according to the statement released by Yahoo. 

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US and Israel users of Yahoo to get compensation 

An individual is allowed to file a claim and may receive $358 or more from a total of  $117,500,000 settlement funds. The major security breaches were reported in the second half of 2016. The users of Yahoo will be provided with several benefits in order to compensate for the security breach. The users will be served with two years of credit monitoring services by a company named AllClearID. The company will provide services that will include theft insurance up to $1 million along with identity theft monitoring and identity recovery assistant. Yahoo announced that the compensation could range from $100 to a max of $358.80 which will be decided on the number of funds available after the rest of the benefits have been covered. 

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Yahoo received criticism 

Yahoo received a lot of criticism as there was a delay in the disclosure of breached and is presently facing several lawsuits as well as investigations which is being executed by the members of the US Congress. These cyber-attacks affected the July 2016 plans of Verizon Communications to take over Yahoo! at  $4.8 billion. The amount was later reduced to $350 million considering it to be the final price for closing the deal in June 2017.

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