Yahoo’s Data Breaches Unlikely to Derail Verizon Deal

Yahoo’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) second major user accounts hack is unlikely to derail Verizon Communications’ $4.83 billion acquisition of the tech giant, with investors and the public becoming inured to near-daily disclosures of cyberattacks. Hundreds of US companies fall prey to hackers every year and, in many cases, the data breaches neither hurt bottom lines nor scare away customers for too long; after initial anxieties ease, everyone generally moves on and experts say the same holds true for Yahoo and Verizon.
As quoted in the press release:

“I tend to not feel like these hacks are that big of a deal in the broader scheme of things,” said Michael Mahoney, senior managing director at Falcon Point Capital, which invests in wireless companies. “Obviously they can be damaging. But it doesn’t take too long before people forget about it.”
In the U.S. especially, data breaches continue to mount. Within the past few years, hackers have infiltrated Sony Corp., Target Corp., Home Depot Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., auction site EBay Inc. and health insurer Anthem Inc. Almost 1,000 data breaches, including Yahoo’s, occurred in the U.S. just this year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. And in all, more than 35 million critical personal records, including social security and passport numbers and medical and banking data, were exposed in 2016.

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