Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Forgoes Annual Bonus Following Embarrassing Account Security Lapses
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has come under a lot of fire this year, especially for the number of security breaches the corporation has divulged. As a result, Mayer has decided to forgo her usual annual bonus and will instead redistribute it among the corporation’s employees.
Mayer remarked on her Tumblr account, “I am the CEO of the company and since this incident happened during my tenure, I have agreed to forgo my annual bonus and my annual equity grant this year and have expressed my desire that my bonus be redistributed to our company’s hardworking employees, who contributed so much to Yahoo’s success in 2016.”
Mayer’s post is not entirely honest. The CEO is not “giving up” her bonus. Mayer is being stripped of her $12 million 2016 annual bonus and her 2017 equity grant due to the results of an independent investigation.
Mayer’s Tumblr post only references one of the several security breaches Yahoo has revealed this year. According to Mayer, “...in late 2014, we were the victim of a state-sponsored attack and reported it to law enforcement as well as to the 26 users that we understood were impacted.” While 26 Yahoo accounts were most certainly targeted and compromised, Mayer used the phrase “large number of our user database files” to gloss over the actual numbers. It is estimated that 32 million users were affected by this attack alone.
Mayer’s statement also does not reference the other Yahoo hacks, many of which have occurred under her watch. In May, the corporation disclosed that Russian hackers stole and traded on the black market information from more than 40 million Yahoo accounts. The information was mostly from American banking, manufacturing, and retail outfits. This past summer, a hacker known as “Peace” listed 200 million Yahoo accounts for 3 bitcoins or roughly $1,800 USD. In December, the corporation revealed that “an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts.” This breach affected 1 billion users, of which over 150,000 were government employees. Yahoo has also been slapped with a class action suit for gross negligence in its data breaches.
Mayer remarked on her Tumblr account, “I am the CEO of the company and since this incident happened during my tenure, I have agreed to forgo my annual bonus and my annual equity grant this year and have expressed my desire that my bonus be redistributed to our company’s hardworking employees, who contributed so much to Yahoo’s success in 2016.”
Mayer’s post is not entirely honest. The CEO is not “giving up” her bonus. Mayer is being stripped of her $12 million 2016 annual bonus and her 2017 equity grant due to the results of an independent investigation.
Mayer’s Tumblr post only references one of the several security breaches Yahoo has revealed this year. According to Mayer, “...in late 2014, we were the victim of a state-sponsored attack and reported it to law enforcement as well as to the 26 users that we understood were impacted.” While 26 Yahoo accounts were most certainly targeted and compromised, Mayer used the phrase “large number of our user database files” to gloss over the actual numbers. It is estimated that 32 million users were affected by this attack alone.
Mayer’s statement also does not reference the other Yahoo hacks, many of which have occurred under her watch. In May, the corporation disclosed that Russian hackers stole and traded on the black market information from more than 40 million Yahoo accounts. The information was mostly from American banking, manufacturing, and retail outfits. This past summer, a hacker known as “Peace” listed 200 million Yahoo accounts for 3 bitcoins or roughly $1,800 USD. In December, the corporation revealed that “an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts.” This breach affected 1 billion users, of which over 150,000 were government employees. Yahoo has also been slapped with a class action suit for gross negligence in its data breaches.
