Yahoo! was once an internet supergiant that changed the world alongside the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, but has seemed to falter over the past few years into a dirty ditch that it continues to dig and may one day call a grave.

It’s been in the news for a while now and not for the best of reasons. Over the past year, it has suffered two separate and distinct hacks and back in July, Verizon purchased Yahoo!’s core internet business for US$4.83 billion (AUD$6.56 billion), which includes advertising, content, search, and mobile activities.

UPDATE: Verizon could either request a discount or completely reconsider their acquisition of Yahoo after learning of the second major data breach.

Wait, another hack?

Yep, another hack.

So, there were earlier reports in July of Yahoo! being hacked and “at least” 500 million users’ personal data being stolen, which the company had stated to have happened in 2014. This included people’s names, emails, phone numbers, birthdates, passwords, and in some instances, answers to security questions.

Yahoo! owned up to this initial attack, but as of last week, the company has unveiled that it has “discovered” a breach that happened back in August 2013, stealing personal information of more than 1 billion accounts; which is probably each and every Yahoo! account in existence!

If there are just under 7.5 billion people currently living on earth, 1 billion is a buttload of accounts to have their personal information stolen from. They also haven’t determined the who, how, or why of the insanely large-scale breach — which is pretty terrifying.

Another report states that Yahoo! Employees (including CEO Marissa Mayer) knew about the account breach back in 2014, and that it may have been essential to its planned sale to Verizon — Verizon reportedly asking for a US$1 billion (AUD$1.36 billion) discount; though this was not disclosed until the deal went through.

Well, what now?

Well, what should have been disclosed three years ago is only coming out now. Account users weren’t even notified until this month when they confirmed the breach; and even if they were sent an email, it’s not like anyone would be currently using their Yahoo! emails after learning of the hack…

Although it isn’t as young and spry as it used to be, Yahoo! still has a number of current users (although, maybe a whole lot less after these frightening situations), but people on social media are calling for someone to “put Yahoo out of its misery”, and to “dump the useless Marissa Mayer”.

Should they look to recuperate from their showcases of devastatingly poor security, or maybe, should they just enjoy the plane ride as it crashes and burns?

If you’re one of the large number of unfortunate current Yahoo! account holders, the company’s chief information security officer, Bob Lord, released a blog article on their Tumblr, stating all of the details of the attack and what you can do in order to increase your security measures and protect your account.

Image credits: Kues1, Asierromero | Freepik.com