It was finally in 2004 that it was brought to the forefront. A former America Online software engineer stole 92 million screen names and email addresses and sold them to spammers. This led to 7 billion unsolicited emails. However, data theft and hacks would continue to get much more frequent, and much more malevolent. Even stalwarts such as the US Military, AT&T, Ebay, Adobe, and Target would be affected.
The Largest Hacks And Data Breaches In World History
Click the image above for an interactive infogprahic.
Infographic source: Information is Beautiful