Technology has helped us – to put it in overly simple terms – do literally everything better. One good thing, of many good things, about technology is that hard drives, data centers, and other information storage devices and services all centralize huge treasure troves of data that otherwise couldn’t be jam-packed into such small areas.
The downside of this information centralization is that cybercriminals who seek out to illegally access such big-time banks of private, personal, monetarily valuable information are given much greater payouts than in previous years because they simply get so much data at once!
Data breaches are of major concern to laypeople, tech-savvy geeks, Silicon Valley tech giant C-suite occupants, and everybody – as well as every entity – in between.
People have generally grown increasingly weary of tech companies – not just pure tech companies, as we have recognized what all could potentially go wrong if retailers’ online storefronts were hacked into, for example – over the past five to 10 years, but tech companies still fail to properly store and secure our information.
What Were the Largest Cybersecurity Breaches of Recent Times?
Some of the largest cybersecurity breaches in recent years, just to frame what’s to follow this subsection of this article, have effectively doubled as the largest breaches of all-time. This holds true, and likely will hold true for a long time, because more and more people’s info is stored on computers and other technologically-advanced devices.
Yahoo holds the record for the biggest cybersecurity breach of all-time from an incident dating back to August 2013, in which some three billion of its free email account users’ info was taken.
Marriott and – this isn’t a typo or a mistake, unfortunately for the company – Yahoo, yet again, are tied in second place, all-time, with breaches that let some 500 million people’s info out into the ether and into the hands of cybercriminals. These two took place from 2014 to 2018 and in late 2014, respectively.
Here’s the Latest Mass Cybersecurity Problem to Surface
Cybercriminals recently created a mobile app for Samsung devices called “Updates for Samsung.” The app looked as legitimate as such a Samsung fake could possibly appear, ultimately tricking some 10 million Android device users in total.
Updates for Samsung rerouted its users to a spammy webpage filled to the brim with ads and expensive downloads of digital goods.
News of the Updates for Samsung app broke yesterday, Thursday, July 4, 2019.
