Yahoo spin-off settles for $47m for 2013 data breach
The holding company of what remains of Yahoo is to settle claims following a 2013 data breach for $47m (£36m), five years after the cyber attack saw details of 3 billion users stolen.
Altaba, a holding company made up the parts of Yahoo not bought in Verizon's acquisition of the internet company, said it had agreed to settle a consumer class action litigation following the data breach.
The agreement would settle three current pieces of litigation against Altaba, which took on the liabilities for two Yahoo data breaches in 2013 and 2014.
Yahoo was an early internet pioneer in the late 1990s, with an online search tool to rival Google with email and internet services and later a substantial online publishing arm.
But Altaba is what remains of the original Yahoo after the majority of its operations were bought by Verizon for $4.4bn in 2016.
The deal was subject to a writedown, cutting the value of Yahoo by $350m, after the full scale of the data breach was revealed.
Altaba chief executive Thomas McInerney said: "These developments mark a significant milestone in cleaning up our contingent liabilities related to the Yahoo data breach."
The company is now an investment firm, holding stakes in Alibaba. The company today also sold $4.3bn of Yahoo! Japan shares. Altaba's share price fell 2.5pc.
In 2017, Yahoo admitted that every single one of its 3 billion accounts had been affected in a major 2013 cyber breach. The company had initially believed only 1 billion of its accounts were compromised. Former Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has blamed Russian state-sponsored hackers for the data breach.
Yahoo was also fined £250,000 by Britain's data watchdog for the breach earlier this year.
