Author: mdsnead

Every technophile knows that buying the latest and greatest tech gadgets is no cheap hobby. With new products coming out seemingly every day, I’m looking out for your bottom line by keeping all the best tech deals and coupons right here in one place.

When to Shop for Electronics Deals

Black Friday, along with the rest of the holiday shopping season, is known for electronics deals, especially televisions. But there are still great deals to be had during the rest of the year. Digital cameras and other small consumer electronics often see price drops in March and April, since new models are typically released at the end or beginning of the year. Prices on small electronics tend to drop during Labor Day sales, as well. For new computers and tablets, check out mid-summer and back to school sales. Additionally, if you’re looking for the latest tech gadget deals, like Google Home deals or Amazon Echo deals, you may want to wait for a new model to be released. You’ll likely find deep discounts on the older model a few months after the new release.

Who Has the Best Tech Deals?

The best place to buy is going to depend on what you’re buying, but for most electronics, especially computers, tablets and TVs, you can’t go wrong with Amazon or Best Buy, especially with Best Buy’s price matching policy. Costco often has great prices on televisions, while B&H is a great site for digital cameras and accessories. If you’re in the market for computer components, Newegg or Fry’s often have affordable prices. Whatever you’re buying, be sure to sign up for the store email or newsletter whenever possible to get exclusive deals and discounts sent right to your inbox.

The largest hack in history just became triple the trouble for Yahoo.

Yahoo revealed Tuesday that every single one of its 3 billion accounts got hacked in a 2013 breach. Late last year, it had said that the attack compromised 1 billion accounts — which already made it the largest data breach ever.

The new information stems from an investigation that followed Verizon’s takeover of Yahoo in June in a $4.48 billion deal.

To put things in perspective, 3 billion — every account ever registered on Yahoo — is greater than the number of every user on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter combined.

It’s a landmark development for an already historic breach, and it comes as people are still reeling from yet another supersized hack, an incident at credit-monitoring company Equifax. That one, revealed less than a month ago, affected 145 million Americans, or roughly half the US population, and last week cost Equifax’s CEO his job.

The Yahoo news came on the same day that members of Congress heard testimony from that ex-CEO, Richard Smith, and criticized Equifax for allowing the breach in the first place and for its handling of the matter since then.

Yahoo said it didn’t suffer a new breach, but rather learned of 2 billion additional users having been affected in its 2013 incident. It’s sent a notification to all its users, telling them that it had taken action in 2016 to protect all accounts, requiring password changes and blocking access from accounts with unencrypted security questions.

The information stolen in the massive breach did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data or bank account information. Yahoo is still working with law enforcement to determine who was behind the attack.

Yahoo also suffered a major cyberattack in 2014 in which information from 500 million user accounts was stolen.

Verizon was originally supposed to buy Yahoo for $4.83 billion, but cut the price by $350 million in February in the wake of the security scandal. Yahoo is still reportedly under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to alert users quickly enough.

It’s unclear how much more Verizon would have cut the price if it had known of the 3 billion affected users. Verizon declined to comment beyond the press release.