Government record-keeping increases along with the need for privacy laws.
1800s
Lewis Brandeis and Samuel Warren’s “The Right to Privacy” is published in the Harvard Law Review.
1890
Yahoo suffers a breach of 3 billion user accounts, the largest breach ever.
2013
Another Yahoo breach exposes personal data of another 500 million users.
2014
2016
The General Data Protection Regulation is passed in the European Union, a move aimed at helping people control the use of their personal information. The regulation is implemented in 2018.
2017
Equifax, the credit report bureau, suffers a breach that impacts 145.5 million accounts, exposing the personal credit histories of a large number of users.
2017
European publications begin reporting that U.S. political campaigns are targeting social advertising by using data harvested from users’ Facebook accounts without their permission.
2015
A holiday breach at Target allows 40 million credit card numbers to be stolen.
DreamHost begins fight against the Department of Justice when the DOJ requests the IP addresses and contact information of 1.3 million visitors to the site disruptj20.org, a site hosted by DreamHost.