Yahoo Slapped With Class Action Suit For Gross Negligence In Massive Data Breach

As we covered on Thursday, Yahoo suffered a major breach back in 2014 that resulted in some 500 million user accounts having their information compromised. However, it's only just recently that users have learned of this, so that's the first major criticism of Yahoo but it goes deeper.

Yahoo has said that the attack was caused by a "state-sponsored actor", which means the company could have exercised caution about revealing what happened because it wouldn't want to be targeted again. However, when half a billion users have their accounts compromised, it's hard to imagine actually keeping quiet about it at all.

Whatever you think of the issue, it has infuriated one Yahoo user enough to take immediate action. A mere day after Yahoo disclosed the breach, a class action lawsuit was filed in the San Jose federal court "on behalf of all Yahoo users" in the US whose personal information was compromised and leaked.

At the moment, we're sure that Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer would love for nothing more than to see this whole ordeal die down, as the company's Internet business is currently on the verge of being acquired by Verizon. In the worst possible way, this incident had impeccable timing - but again, had Yahoo bolstered its security long ago, and disclosed this attack soon after it happened, this mammoth headache could have actually been a distant memory by now. Timing is everything.