The California courts have a controversial case involving Yahoo before them. Reports indicate that about 3 billion accounts were struck by some data breaches between 2013 and 2016. The decision the country eventually makes this time around matters. That is because it will determine whether or not the owners of the affected accounts will be compensated by the company. A positive ruling for the affected account owners would make them eligible for a $358 payout. The other option would be for them to receive two years of free credit monitoring.

A close focus at the outcomes

Yahoo is dealing with fears of having to use about $117.5 million on the compensation exercise. That is if the verdict won’t be in its favor. A large number of users claim that some of their critical details were stolen. Among these included names, passwords, and email addresses.

The affected persons will be submitting their claims at Yahoodatabreachsettlement.com. This would entitle them to about two years of free credit monitoring services if found eligible.

The first time that the company disclosed details about the data breaches was way back in 2016. It asserted that these breaches were massive. This worried most of the users on the platform.

The turn of events

According to the company, the first data breach occurred in 2013. In this case, some unauthorized third party had stolen critical data of users. A year later, the company made another announcement indicating the other data breach. The company stated that the second case involved a “state-sponsored actor.”

The nature of the attack is being rated differently by different persons. This was after details came out about the particular data that was stolen. Credit card information and the bank account numbers of the users were not stolen in the incidence. The stolen data included emails and passwords of the users using the company’s service.

Yahoo was quick to appeal to users to take safety precautions. It asked them to change their security questions and passwords with immediate effect. These are some of the most common and working steps globally in protecting online accounts.

The company has some conditions for users that require compensation to fulfill. That is the only way they will be eligible for the payouts. One of them is that a user must be from either Israel of California.