Personal experiences

AOL:
In 2005, 92 million screen names and email addresses were distributed or sold, leading to 7 billion malicious emails. An AOL employee was responsible for the theft and received 15 months in prison. The following year, AOL accidentally posted the search data of 650,000 users. The data included their web searches and whether they clicked on a search result. An estimated 20 million web searches became public.

T.J. Max:
The discount retailer was hacked and more than 45.7 million credit card and debit card numbers were stolen. The man responsible for this attack received 20 years in prison.

Target:
In 2013, 110 million records connected to Target customers were hacked. The following investigation showed that a third-party vendor was hacked, and the criminals used it to break into Target’s system. Target’s Chief Information Officer and Chief Executive Officer both stepped down in 2014.

NYC Taxi and limousine Commission:
In 2014, an attempt to anonymize data that the commission was holding accidentally released 20 GB of data that included information associated with over 173 million tax customers. This include pickup and drop off locations, times of rides and other metadata.

Apple iCloud:
In 2014, Apple’s iCloud was targeted and the personal photos and videos of celebrities were released.

Ashley Madison
This website that caters to infidelity was hacked in 2015, and the personal information (including names, addresses, and payment card transactions) of 32 million users was exposed. Almost 10 GB of data as published on the deep web. See Video!

See also: Identity Theft

Resources
[1] Gamer, N. (2015, October 21). Data breach horror stories: Worst hacks in history. Retrieved April 17, 2017, from http://blog.trendmicro.com/data-breach-horror-stories-worst-hacks-in-history/