When you sign up for an email account, you would expect that these large companies have some sort of security in place to protect your information.
Of course, mistakes happen and things can go wrong, but sometimes a small mistake can cost a company millions of dollars.
But that also means that there could be a portion of that money going into your wallet.
In 2016, it was revealed that Yahoo discovered a nearly three-year-old security breach that allowed hackers access to more than three billion accounts.
The breach is reported to have happened in 2013 and 2014, and it's not only people who used Yahoo mail that were affected.
People who had Tumblr and Flickr accounts may also have had their personal information stolen.
In what's being called the biggest security breach in history, Yahoo has agreed to pay up a huge sum of money to users that had an account with them during a specific time frame.
Are you eligible to receive compensation?
If you had a Yahoo email account during the time the security breach occurred, you may in luck.
The web services provider is paying $50 million in damages to millions of people in the U.S. and Israel whose personal information were stolen.
This fund will compensate accountholders for "$25 per hour of time spent dealing with issues triggered by the security breach," according to a report by Associated Press.
If you have documented your losses, you may be eligible for up to 15 hours of lost time, which comes out to nearly $400.
If you don't have any kind of documentation, you can still file a claim for up to five hours, which is more than $100.
Accountholders that paid for a premium email account can also receive a 25% refund.
But money isn't the only thing Yahoo is giving away.
AllClear, a credit monitoring service, which costs more than $300 for a two-year membership, will be free for accountholders affected by the breach.
While the ruling is just a preliminary settlement, if it gets final approval at federal court in California by the end of this month, accountholders affected by the breach will receive notice by email.
[H/T: AP]
