Facebook and LinkedIn data breaches among the top ten largest in U.S. in 2021

This year has been a big one for data breaches and cyberattacks on companies and organizations.

Since January 2021 the 10 largest data breaches in the U.S. affected 1.1 billion individuals, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Facebook and LinkedIn top the list, which together exposed more than 1 billion individuals’ information this year.

Facebook said in an April blog that the data posted online was scraped from profiles in 2019 using a now defunct Facebook feature. LinkedIn said information posted for sale online was not a breach of “private” data but was “scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites,” according to a June 29 news release from the company.

The Identity Theft Resource Center is nonprofit and tracks publicly reported incidents of compromised personal information and consumer data in the U.S.

“There’s no panacea to this problem that is going to solve everything,” said Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center. “In addition to having all the cybersecurity protocols and infrastructure in place, education is a huge part of this. And not just education of consumers, although that also plays a huge role, but for employees.”

Here are links to the full Dayton Daily News cybersecurity series:

Companies skimp on cybersecurity defense at their own peril

Cybercriminals want your data and ransom money

Cybercriminals make eye-popping ransom demands

Thieves stealing passwords can get ‘keys to the kingdom’

More than a billion people impacted in top U.S. data breaches and leaks in 2021

Credit: Alexis Larsen