The term decentralization is a buzzword on everyone’s lips, starting with world leaders who talk about blockchain, including “Jack Dorsey” who wants to turn Twitter into a decentralized application.

The term “decentralization” did not arise out of nothing but rather as a result of the number of advantages it has in making data more secure.

Central databases are often exposed to massive data breaches.

So the importance of decentralized technology is highlighted, given that yesterday was International Data Privacy Day.

We would like to share with you an article about:

The 7 biggest data breaches of the past decade

1- Capital One:

In March 2019, Paige Thompson, a former employee of online retailer Amazon, exploited deceptive firewalls on Amazon servers leased by Capital One, a global credit card company, and gained access to 106 million records.

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The records included 140,000 US Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Security numbers, and 80,000 bank account numbers, according to data published by Capital One.

Thomson also used the servers to mine cryptocurrencies, a practice known as “cryptojacking.”

Her crime spree ended after she bragged about her work on the GitHub file hosting platform to one of her close friends, but the information was reached by the FBI.

2- Microsoft:

In late December 2019 Microsoft discovered that the internal support database it had been using to measure analytics had been misconfigured for about three weeks.

As a result, anyone with a web browser can access over 250 million customer support records.

An internal study by Microsoft found “no malicious use,” but some customers had their information leaked.

3- Friend Finder Network:

In 2016, more than 412 million Friend Finder accounts were hacked, exposing users’ information, including email addresses and passwords.

The hack included 319 million accounts from another adult site, and 15 million accounts were not removed from the network.

Friends search networks are among the sites favored by hackers. In addition to the aforementioned leaks, Ashley Madison’s data was targeted in 2015 and 32 million accounts were hacked.

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The site claimed to have nearly 40 million accounts at the time. The information was used as part of a “sexual threats” campaign, in which those involved were threatened with leaks if they did not send money.

4- Marriott hotels:

In late 2018, researchers discovered that the computer systems of the Marriott hotel chain had been compromised by Chinese hackers, exposing the personal details of nearly 500 million guests.

The suspected hackers were employed by China’s Ministry of State Security, stealing personal records from Starwood’s reservation system until 2014.

The hackers took information including credit card details, addresses, passport numbers, and email addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth of guests who made reservations from 2014 to September 2018.

5- First American Company:

In May 2019, 885 million records from customers of the first American insurance company were found, becoming publicly accessible.

A First America spokesperson told Gizmodo that the bug was due to a “design flaw” in an app.

“Security, privacy and confidentiality are of the highest priority, and we are committed to protecting our customers’ information,” the company said.

But it seems a little late to say that.

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6- Facebook Company:

Hundreds of millions of user accounts from the social networking site Facebook were compromised and user data was exposed to three separate breaches in 2019.

The first was in March where as many as 600 million exposed passwords were exposed.

In what Facebook described as a “glitch”, only company employees could view the leak.

At the time, engineer Scott Renfo stated that Facebook’s internal investigation had not found any “signs of abuse”.

The second was in April 2019, when information from more than 540 million users was leaked, after Mexican social media company Cultura Colectiva collected data from Facebook users on unsecured Amazon servers.

The information since its removal contains account names, ID numbers, comments and reactions.

As for the third leak, it was in the month of December 2019, when data was leaked on the social networking site from the information of more than 267 million users.

The information was posted on a hacker’s forum for ten days before security researcher Bob Dyachenko found it.

Names, phone numbers and Facebook user IDs were already exposed in the hack.

And all this without counting the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

7. Yahoo Inc.

All 3 billion Yahoo user accounts were affected by the hack in 2013, and its size was only discovered years later when Yahoo was sold to Verizon for $4.48 billion in June 2017.

Hackers stole names, dates of birth, phone numbers and passwords with weak encryption.

Additionally they can also access security questions, backup emails, and useful information in case they are unable to crack some passwords.

Verizon has pledged to “improve” Yahoo’s security.

Finally

What we would like to convey to the user from this topic is that protecting your personal data is your sole responsibility

As all the platforms and companies mentioned above are considered some of the best technology companies, but they did not protect the data of their users and put it to the test.

So it is better to use complex passwords and change them periodically.

Read also:

1.4 million GateHub wallet passwords and data leaked

The BitMEX data leak scandal affected thousands of the crypto community