China data leak: Nearly one billion people had their personal data ...

(CNN) A massive online database apparently containing the personal information of up to one billion Chinese citizens was left unsecured and publicly accessible for more than a year -- until an anonymous user in a hacker forum offered to sell the data and brought it to wider attention last week.

The leak could be one of the biggest ever recorded in history, cybersecurity experts say, highlighting the risks of collecting and storing vast amounts of sensitive personal data online -- especially in a country where authorities have broad and unchecked access to such data.

The vast trove of Chinese personal data had been publicly accessible via what appeared to be an unsecured backdoor link -- a shortcut web address that offers unrestricted access to anyone with knowledge of it -- since at least April 2021, according to LeakIX, a site that detects and indexes exposed databases online.

Access to the database, which did not require a password, was shut down after an anonymous user advertised the more than 23 terabytes (TB) of data for sale for 10 bitcoin -- roughly $200,000 -- in a post on a hacker forum last Thursday.

The user claimed the database was collated by the Shanghai police and contained sensitive information on one billion Chinese nationals, including their names, addresses, mobile numbers, national ID numbers, ages and birthplaces, as well as billions of records of phone calls made to police to report on civil disputes and crimes.

A sample of 750,000 data entries from the three main indexes of the database was included in the seller's post. CNN verified the authenticity of more than two dozen entries from the sample provided by the seller, but was unable to access the original database.

The Shanghai government and police department did not respond to CNN's repeated written requests for comment.

The seller also claimed the unsecured database had been hosted by Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. When reached by CNN for comment on Monday, Alibaba said "we are looking into this" and would communicate any updates. On Wednesday, Alibaba said it declined to comment.

But experts CNN spoke with said it was the owner of the data who was at fault, not the company hosting it.

"As it stands today, I believe this would be the largest leak of public information yet -- certainly in terms of the breadth of the impact in China , we're talking about most of the population here," said Troy Hunt, a Microsoft regional director based in Australia.

China is home to 1.4 billion people, which means the data breach could potentially affect more than 70% of the population.

"It's a little bit of a case where the genie is not going to be able to go back in the bottle. Once the data is out there in the form it appears to be now, there's no going back," said Hunt.

It is unclear how many people have accessed or downloaded the database during the 14 months or more it was left publicly available online. Two Western cybersecurity experts who spoke to CNN were both aware of the existence of the database before it was thrust into the public spotlight last week, suggesting it could be easily discovered by people who knew where to look.

Vinny Troia, a cybersecurity researcher and founder of dark web intelligence firm Shadowbyte, said he first discovered the database "around January" while searching for open databases online.

"The site that I found it on is public, anybody (could) access it, all you have to do is register for an account," Troia said. "Since it was opened in April 2021, any number of people could have downloaded the data," he added.

Troia said he downloaded one of the main indexes of the database, which appears to contain information on nearly 970 million Chinese citizens. But it was difficult to judge whether the open access was an oversight from the owners of the database, or if it was an intentional shortcut intended to be shared among a small number of people, he said.

"Either they forgot about it, or they intentionally left it open because it's easier for them to access," he said, referring to the authorities responsible for the database. "I don't know why they would. It sounds very careless."

Unsecured personal data -- exposed through leaks, breaches, or some form of incompetence -- is an increasingly common problem faced by companies and governments around the world, and cybersecurity experts say it is not unusual to find databases that are left open to public access.

In 2018, Trioa discovered that a Florida-based marketing firm exposed close to 2 TB of data that appeared to include personal information on hundreds of millions of American adults on a publicly accessible server, according to Wired

In 2019, Victor Gevers, a Dutch cybersecurity researcher, found an online database containing names, national ID numbers, birth dates and location data of more than 2.5 million people in China's far-western region of Xinjiang, which was left unprotected for months by Chinese firm SenseNets Technology, according to Reuters

But the latest data leak is particularly worrying, cybersecurity researchers say, not only because of its potentially unprecedented volume, but also the sensitive nature of the information contained.

A CNN analysis of the database sample found police records of cases spanning nearly two decades from 2001 to 2019. While the majority of the entries are civil disputes, there are also records of criminal cases ranging from fraud to rape.

In one case, a Shanghai resident was summoned by police in 2018 for using a virtual private network (VPN) to evade China's firewall and access Twitter, allegedly retweeting "reactionary remarks involving the (Communist) Party, politics and leaders."

In another record, a mother called the police in 2010, accusing her father-in-law of raping her 3-year-old daughter.

"There could be domestic violence, child abuse, all sorts of things in there, that to me is a lot more worrying," said Hunt, the Microsoft regional director.

"Might this lead to extortion? We often see extortion of individuals after data leaks, examples where hackers can even try to ransom individuals."

The Chinese government has recently stepped up efforts to improve protection of online user data privacy. Last year, the country passed its first Personal Information Protection Law , laying out ground rules on how personal data should be collected, used and stored. But experts have raised concerns that while the law can regulate technology companies, it could be challenging to enforce when applied to the Chinese state.

Bob Diachenko, a security researcher based in Ukraine, first came upon the database in April. In mid-June, his company detected that the database was attacked by an unknown malicious actor, who destroyed and copied the data and left a ransom note demanding 10 bitcoin for its recovery, Diachenko said.

It is not clear if this was the work of the same person who advertised the sale of the database information last week.

By July 1, the ransom note had disappeared, according to Diachenko, but only 7 gigabytes (GB) of data was available -- instead of the 23 TB originally advertised.

Diachenko said it suggested the ransom had been resolved, but the database owners had continued to use the exposed database for storing, until it was shut down over the weekend.

"Maybe there was some junior developer who noticed it and tried to remove the notes before senior management noticed them," he said.

Shanghai Police did not respond to CNN's request for comments on the ransom note.

This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

Target to pay $18.5M for 2013 data breach that affected 41 million ...

Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY

Retail giant Target will pay an $18.5 million multistate settlement, the largest ever for a data breach, to resolve state investigations of the 2013 cyber attack that affected more than 41 million of the company's customer payment card accounts.

Announced Tuesday by 47 states and the District of Columbia, the agreement sets new industry standards for companies that process payment cards and maintain confidential information about their customers.

Target confirms massive credit-card data breach

The states' investigation of the breach determined that cyberattackers gained access to Target's computer gateway served through credentials stolen from a third-party vendor in Nov. 2013. Using the credentials to exploit weaknesses in Target's system, the attackers gained access to a customer service database, installed malware on the system and captured full names, phone numbers, email addresses, payment card numbers, credit card verification codes, and other sensitive data.

Along with affecting 41 million customer payment card accounts, the breach affected contact information for more than 60 million Target customers.

"Companies across sectors should be taking their data security policies and procedures seriously. Not doing so potentially exposes sensitive client and consumer information to hackers," said a statement issued by Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, who led the investigation along with Illinois counterpart Lisa Madigan.

Target: Data stolen from up to 70 million customers

Target previously provided free credit monitoring services for consumers affected by the breach. As part of a $10 million class-action lawsuit settlement reached in 2015, the company also agreed to pay up to $10,000 to consumers with evidence they suffered losses from the data breach.

Few Target victims to benefit from settlement

Tuesday, the company said it had worked with the state investigators to address claims related to the embarrassing episode.

"We're pleased to bring this issue to a resolution for everyone involved," the Minneapolis-based company said in a written statement. Costs of the settlement are already reflected in liability reserves that Target has previously disclosed, the company added.

Terms of the agreement require Target to:

Develop, implement and maintain a comprehensive information security program

Employ an executive or officer responsible for executing the program

Hire an independent expert to conduct a security assessment

Maintain and support data security software on the company's network

Segregate the cardholder data from the rest of the network

Take steps to control network access, including password rotation policies and two-factor authentication.

As part of the settlement, the states will use their respective shares of the Target payment for attorney fees and other investigation costs, as well as consumer protection law enforcement funds, consumer education or other purposes.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Kevin McCoy on Twitter: @kmccoynyc

Your data was probably stolen in cyberattack in 2018 – and you ...

When it comes to data breaches, 2018 was neither the best of times nor the worst of times. It was more a sign of the times.

Billions of people were affected by data breaches and cyberattacks in 2018 – 765 million in the months of April, May and June alone – with losses surpassing tens of millions of dollars, according to global digital security firm Positive Technologies.

Cyberattacks increased 32 percent in the first three months of the year and 47 percent during the April-June period, compared to the same periods in 2017, according to the firm, which was founded in 2002.

There wasn't a breach "quite as significant" as the Equifax data breach from September 2017 in which an estimated 143 million Americans faced potential lifelong threat of identity theft, said Marta Tellado, president and CEO of Consumer Reports. "But the sheer volume of breaches of major companies was stunning," she said.

Breaches and cyberattacks continue to escalate, "and it’s not like it's slowing down,” said Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist for McAfee, the California-based maker of antivirus and computer security software.

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As consumers grow more accustomed to breaches being revealed regularly – only four weeks ago, Dunkin', Marriott and Quora each announced one within a span of six days – they tend to either accept or ignore them, Davis says.

With "security fatigue, (consumers) just throw their hands up and say something bad is going to happen, so I should brace myself for it," he said. "Or they say, 'It's not going to happen to me, it will happen to somebody else.' "

And several breaches in 2018 were among the largest of all time. Last month, Marriott, the world's largest hotelier, announced one of the largest-ever breaches involving as many as 500 million people who made reservations at its Starwood properties on or before Sept. 10, 2018. Those customers may have had their personal information accessed in a breach of the Starwood guest reservation database, the company said.

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Marriott announced the breach Nov. 19 but said unauthorized access to the database had gone on for as long as four years. Among the data potentially accessed: names, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation dates and communication preferences.

The 2013 Yahoo breach, which affected as many as 3 billion accounts, remains the largest to date. A separate subsequent Yahoo breach also hit 500 million accounts.

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Just days after Marriott's announcement, question-and-answer website Quora said a security breach compromised the data of as many as 100 million of its 300 million users. The data potentially accessed included names, email addresses and encrypted passwords, along with questions and answers posted. The Dunkin' breach, which made up that late November-early December trifecta, involved only a "small percent" of DD Perks program members having their account usernames and passwords accessed, the company said.

Back in March, sports apparel merchant Under Armour disclosed an intruder had gotten the email addresses and login information of about 150 million users of its food and nutrition website, MyFitnessPal.

Breaches hit other big-name brands, too. In April, Hudson's Bay, the Canada-based parent company of the Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue chains, said hackers had stolen the personal and financial information of more than 5 million credit and debit cards used at stores in North America.

About 29 million Facebook accounts were breached in September – originally Facebook said it was 50 million – with attackers getting sensitive personal information from nearly half of those users. Among the data accessed: phone numbers and email addresses, recent Facebook searches, location history and the types of devices people used to access the social network.

The revelations of that breach came during Facebook's attempt to assure its 2 billion-plus users of its sincere efforts to protect personal information after Russian operatives spread propaganda on the network during and after the 2016 presidential election – and in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the accounts of 87 million users were accessed without consent by the U.K-based political targeting firm.

Facebook's "deliberate data practices are often as outrageous as their failure to use strong security," Tellado said. "As badly as we need new laws to protect people from malicious hackers, we also need new laws and corporate norms to keep the companies we entrust with our information from selling it without our consent. So 2019 is going to see robust calls for new security and privacy legislation."

Breaches used to be isolated. One of the first big ones hit Target in 2013, affecting as many as 110 million people. When that happened, "you worried about your credit card or your Target data and any of that being leaked," said Bart McDonough, CEO of Agio, a New York-headquartered information technology and cybersecurity provider.

But that breach was just a harbinger: Each escalating breach these days is interconnected, he says. That means cyber-criminals may be able to compile enough of a digital profile about you to trick you into revealing more.

"Now you think about what information do they know about me or my clients based on this breach that can allow the next breach to happen," said McDonough, whose book, "Cyber Smart: Five Habits to Protect Your Family, Money and Identity from Cyber Criminals," publishes Jan. 7.

That interconnectivity is only going to make each successive breach potentially more worrisome, McAfee's David says. "You hear about all of these high-profile attacks," he said. "Ultimately, there is so much data out there now that the bad guys are going to start using machine learning and artificial intelligence to sift through it all."

Some simple tips to protect yourself:

• Use unique passwords. Too many consumers still use "password" or "123456" as their password. "And the sad thing is they use it over and over again," Davis said. He and McDonough recommend using a password manager such as LastPass or 1Password. Those also let you use two-factor authentication, requiring an additional step before access is allowed to your accounts. "It's a defensive depth approach," McDonough said.

• Be suspicious of email. Seven out of 10 cyberattacks (71 percent) start with a phishing email, Davis says. "It’s obvious to me that people are still willing to click on either links or attachments in emails without a lot of thought," he said. As cyber-criminals get bits of data about you, be careful not to accidentally give them more. "Especially this time of year, before you start clicking away, think through it for a minute – did you actually order something that would suggest that this shipper (or retailer) should be sending you a notice," he said.

• Update your software. Admittedly, it's annoying, McDonough says. "But apply all the software updates on your devices as frequently as possible," he said. "If you do these things you are dramatically better protected than the person who doesn’t."

•Credit freezes and other measures. If you have been a victim of data misuse and are concerned about identity theft you can get a credit freeze. "(It) makes it a lot harder for identity thieves to open accounts in your name, and, since the Equifax breach, it’s free," Tellado said.

You should also limit the personal information you give out, she says. "For example, if a retailer asks for your email address or phone number, you should politely decline," Tellado said. Another smart move – install a tracker blocker such as Disconnect.me or Privacy Badger, she says, to protect against malware and ransomware delivered through online advertisements.

For more, check out Consumer Reports’ Guide to Digital Privacy and Security, Tellado said, to "help consumers navigate the risks and solutions to keep you and your family safe and secure."

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Was your password hacked? Here are the sites that alert to breaches

Jennifer Jolly

Special to USA TODAY

Sigh. A new day, a new data breach.

Facebook and LinkedIn (which says the latest incident was a “scrape,” not a “breach”) are just two of dozens of recent examples of our precious passwords falling into the wrong hands.

Whether it's an email service, an online store account or even a service designed to keep our passwords safe, no site or service is immune. When it happens, our Spidey senses go off and we go into panic mode, imagining all the terrible things that might happen if a hacker gets into our accounts, uses our identities or goes on a massive shopping spree under our names.

It's a scary digital world we live in, but many valuable tools can make it safer for you. Here’s how to find out whether hackers have your password – and how to fix it right away.

Have I Been Pwned?

The most popular of all the hack-finding tools is Have I Been Pwned. It’s a website that tracks and catalogs high- and low-profile data breaches. You can search the site's database using your email address or phone number. If the site links your login with a known breach, it tells you which company was hit, and what kind of information hackers might have.

I just typed my email address in, and sure enough, my passwords are all over the place. Luckily, they’re old ones, but still, the page of breaches seems to go on for days: LinkedIn, Adobe, Poshmark, Dropbox, Houzz, and countless other data breaches included my email address and various other data, including passwords, phone numbers, addresses, and even employers.

I live my life online, so having accounts on a ton of different websites, app and services means the odds of my data showing up in a hack are high. But 28 seems a bit excessive, even for me.

The fix? Change all of your passwords, add a password management tool, and for the love of all that’s tech-ish, stop using the most hacked passwords like “123456,” “password,” or the ever-popular curse word mash-ups like “eff-something.” (C’mon, you know what I mean on that last one.)

HaveIBeenPwned is an excellent tool if you want to dive into past data breaches to see if your information is floating around out there. It also points you toward a password manager. But other services offer a more proactive approach to tracking hacked information, including notifications whenever your personal info pops up in a new leak, or they check sites for weaknesses before they cause a problem for you.

Here are my favorites.

BreachAlarm

You can use BreachAlarm in the same way you use HaveIBeenPwned. It's easy to search the site's database to find past hacks and leaks that might include your personal info. But if you want to take things to the next level, the $30 annual subscription will scan new hacks whenever they pop up and then alert you if your data appears. This gives you a head start in changing your passwords or closing your accounts on sites that may put your identity or finances at risk.

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Sucuri

If you want to get even more proactive about your protection, consider Sucuri. Sucuri is a site that actually performs active scans on websites to search for vulnerabilities that hackers might exploit.

If a place you love shows up as being risky, it's wise to routinely change your password there, or at the very least use a password you don't use anywhere else. (This should be a rule for all sites, but it's easy to forget). There's a browser extension that makes the process even easier. If you run your own website, the $16 subscription will keep you up to date on your own website's safety, but that's not required to scan URLs .

Google Chrome

Yes! Believe it or not, Google just added its own password scanner right into the most popular web browser on the planet. Google Chrome can alert you if it finds that your passwords were likely included in a breach or hack. You may not have noticed this new advanced feature, but it's easy to use.

If you’re logged in to Chrome, click on your photo in the upper right-hand corner of the page, then click on the little key icon. That takes you to your “settings.” You can also get there by typing in chrome://settings/passwords. See it? Now tap "Passwords."

On the passwords page, click "Check passwords" and then "Check now." The built-in tool will tell you if any of your passwords have security problems. If they do, you'll be prompted to change them, and a link will direct you to the site to make the password update easy.

Once you tackle your own password problems, be sure to pass this information on to your loved ones. If your parents, kids, or less tech-savvy friends are still using their birthdays, pets’ names, or home addresses, be sure to help them change those too!

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist. Email her at jj@techish.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenniferJolly.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.

What are the worst floods in American history? A rundown of the top 30

John Harrington

24/7 Wall Street

Floods, among the most terrifying forces on Earth, have led to countless disasters throughout history. The story of a catastrophic flood -- a metaphor for a cleansing of humanity’s sins -- appears in many cultures, from ancient Mesopotamia to China, to Maya peoples and aboriginal tribes in Australia.

Flooding killed 116 people in the United States last year, the most lethal type of weather event in the nation. Floods also are responsible for about $6 billion in damage annually in this country, according to National Geographic.

Much of the severe flooding in America has occurred around the Mississippi River and in Texas, as well as along the Gulf Coast and Florida, because those areas are vulnerable to hurricanes.

Floods have shaped the history of our nation, wiping out some communities forever, and forcing others to start a new life in another part of the country.

In June, the Weather Network forecast normal or above normal rainfall east of the Mississippi River and in the southwest this summer. With that prediction, and with it fears of disastrous flooding that accompany hurricane season, 24/7 Wall Street has created a list of the 30 worst floods in our nation’s history. We used data compiled by government agencies, including the National Weather Service, and consulted sources such as media accounts of historical weather events to develop this list.

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30. Hurricane Harvey

Affected area: Houston, Texas

Houston, Texas Date of event: 2017

2017 Fatalities: 89

89 Cost: $126.3 billion

Houston missed the brunt of the impact of Hurricane Rita in 2005, but it was not so fortunate with Hurricane Harvey. That tempest caused widespread devastation in the greater Houston area. The slow movement of Harvey from Aug. 26-30 contributed to the destructive and deadly floods in southeast Texas. The most rain fell in Nederland, Texas, which received more than 60 inches of rain from Aug. 24-Sept.1. The flooding in the region displaced 30,000 people and damaged or destroyed more than 200,000 homes and businesses.

29. Los Angeles flood

A ffected area: Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California Date of event: 1938

1938 Fatalities: 115

115 Cost: $1.24 billion

After a few years of dry weather, Los Angeles received five days of rain from two storms starting on Feb. 27, 1938. Excessive rainfall caused the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana rivers to overflow. Bridges, roads, and buildings were wiped out; phone lines were downed; and whole communities were cut off. The destruction from the flood prompted the city to rethink zoning and planning decisions that led to the creation of today’s Los Angeles.

28. Buffalo Creek flood

Affected area: West Virginia

West Virginia Date of event: 1972

1972 Fatalities: 125

125 Cost: Unknown

West Virginia has been witness to many mining disasters, but this one occurred above ground, not below. On Feb. 26, 1972, a coal waste dam -- constructed to hold water, coal waste, and silt -- collapsed, releasing 132 million gallons of black ooze into a narrow valley. The wall of water was reportedly up to 20 feet high. The onslaught wiped out 17 communities downstream. Some towns were rebuilt but others vanished. State and federal investigations determined that the dam, owned and operated by the Buffalo Mining Company, was not built properly and that the mining company’s parent, The Pittston Company, had disregarded the safety of the residents. Survivors and family victims sued Pittson, and in 1974, the suit was settled for $13.5 million, or an average of $13,000 per plaintiff after legal fees.

27. Hurricane Agnes flood

Affected area: Middle Atlantic states

Middle Atlantic states Date of event: 1972

1972 Fatalities: 128

128 Cost: $18.0 billion

1972 was a bad year for bad weather events. That year, Hurricane Agnes, one of the largest ever recorded in June, brought torrential rain to a wide swath of the eastern United States on June 19. The storm swept up 15 states in its wake. The worst impact from flooding was in Pennsylvania, where the Susquehanna and Lackawanna rivers caused significant damage to the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton metropolitan area. Even Pennsylvania’s governor had to be rescued from the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg. At the time, Agnes was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

26. Southeast U.S. floods

Affected area: Southeastern states

Southeastern states Date of event: 1998

1998 Fatalities: 132

132 Cost: $2.49 billion

The southeastern part of the United States was torn asunder by tornadoes and floods that cost the lives of 132 people. Property damage surpassed the $1 billion level. El Nino was blamed for the unstable weather, which began in the winter of 1997 and went into spring of the following year. During that winter, Florida received above-average rainfall, causing extensive flooding. In Tampa, 36 inches of rain fell that winter.

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25. Mill River Dam

Affected area: Western Massachusetts

Western Massachusetts Date of event: 1874

1874 Fatalities: 139

139 Cost: Unknown

The failure of the Mill River Dam in Massachusetts, a major disaster in the late 19th century, is an example of an avoidable tragedy. The reservoir dam was built in the hills above Williamsburg and Northampton in western Massachusetts. It burst during the early hours of May 16, 1874, and water cascaded down a narrow valley of factories and farms. About 600 million gallons of water flooded the area, rising to 40 feet. An hour later, 139 people were dead. Investigations revealed that the dam was poorly built, but no one was held accountable. The tragedy prompted residents in western Massachusetts to adopt stricter safety measures for reservoir dams.

24. Big Thompson Canyon Flood

Affected area: Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado

Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado Date of event: 1976

1976 Fatalities: 144

144 Cost: $156.3 million

The Big Thompson Canyon Flood marred the centennial celebration of Colorado becoming a state. Party-goers had gathered in the canyon on July 31 to celebrate the centennial. In late afternoon, a light rain began to fall. It turned heavy in early evening. In a two-hour span that evening, a year’s worth of rain fell in the region. Water cascaded down mountainsides. At 10:30 p.m., a massive wave of water 20 feet high roared through the canyon, washing over everything ahead of it. Helicopters were deployed to find the 144 victims of the flood.

23. Pacific tsunami

Affected area: Hawaii, Alaska

Hawaii, Alaska Date of event: 1946

1946 Fatalities: 165

165 Cost: $334.1 million

The Aleutian Islands earthquake launched a tsunami on April 1, 1946, that overwhelmed parts of Alaska and Hawaii. Unimak Island in the Aleutian island chain was first hit by a 100-foot wave that wiped out a lighthouse 30 feet above sea level, killing five people. The wave headed south to Hawaii where it slammed into Hilo, erasing a third of the city. A schoolhouse in another part of the island state was destroyed, killing a teacher and 25 students.

22. Brazos River Flood

Affected area: Freeport, Texas

Freeport, Texas Date of event: 1913

1913 Fatalities: 177

177 Cost: $88.7 million

The Brazos River Basin was familiar with periodic flooding, which helped cotton farmers grow their crop. Still, area residents were not prepared for what happened on Dec. 5, 1913. Heavy rain began falling on already elevated river water levels, and water overflowed the riverbank and washed into East Waco. Two people were killed by the surging river, and businesses were damaged. Farther south, the Brazos River and Colorado River overflowed their banks and combined, the deluge eventually killed 177 people. The flood prompted action to protect the city of Waco from further flooding.

21. Floods in eastern U.S.

Affected area: Appalachians, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast

Appalachians, Mid-Atlantic, Northeast Date of event: 1996

1996 Fatalities: 187

187 Cost: $4.79 billion

Blizzards are bad enough, but when a heavy volume of snow melts causing flooding, that is a deadly one-two punch. Such was the case in early 1996, when that combination overwhelmed many states in the eastern United States. The Susquehanna River overflowed its banks and flooded low-lying areas. More than 3 inches of rain fell in 24 hours at Williamsport, Pennsylvania. That rainfall led to some of the worst flooding in the Keystone State since Hurricane Agnes 24 years earlier.

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20. East Coast floods

Affected area: East Coast states

East Coast states Date of event: 1955

1955 Fatalities: 200

200 Cost: $7.78 billion

Back-to-back hurricanes led to extensive floods on the East Coast in August 1955. At the time, Hurricane Diane, the second of the two storms to strike the region, was the costliest storm on record. The heaviest rain fell in northern Virginia, with more than 5 inches inundating the region in 24 hours. More than 200 dams In New England either partially or completely failed.

19. Great Northeast Flood

Affected area: Maryland to Maine

Maryland to Maine Date of event: 1936

1936 Fatalities: 200

200 Cost: $85.2 billion

The massive flood that engulfed half of the eastern United States, almost biblical in scope, started with snowmelt, then a downpour, on March 11 that did not relent for 14 days. The tiny town of Pinkham Notch recorded rainfall of more than 22 inches over the period. Rivers throughout New England states overflowed. At the Vernon Dam in Vermont, flood waters from the Connecticut River rose 19 feet above the dam. About 200 people lost their lives, and 14,000 were made homeless. Because of the disaster, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1936, which President Franklin Roosevelt then signed. The act empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build levees, flood walls, and reservoirs.

18. Texas flood

Affected area: Parts of Texas

Parts of Texas Date of event: 1921

1921 Fatalities: 215

215 Cost: $70.2 million

The rainstorm in Texas in 1921 is considered the greatest such event in the history of the Lone Star State. The storm entered the region as a hurricane in Mexico and brought torrential rain in Texas as it moved in a northeasterly direction. In its path, 215 people were killed. The rainfall left up to 9 feet of water in downtown San Antonio. In the town of Taylor, almost 24 inches of rain fell in 35 hours as measured at the U.S. Weather Bureau station on Sept. 9-10.

17. Superstorm Sandy

Affected area: New Jersey, New York

New Jersey, New York Date of event: 2012

2012 Fatalities: 233

233 Cost: $88.4 billion

By the time Sandy reached the New York metropolitan area on Oct. 29, 2012, it had been downgraded to a superstorm from a hurricane. Yet it would turn out to be one of the costliest weather events in U.S. history. Subway service in New York City was knocked out, and multi-million-dollar homes at the Jersey Shore were destroyed. The destructive force of the storm and loss of life ratched up the urgency level for preparing shoreline defenses along the New Jersey coast as well as New York City to address the reality that stronger storms are in the region’s future because of climate change.

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16. Black Hills Flood

Affected area: Rapid City, South Dakota

Rapid City, South Dakota Date of event: 1972

1972 Fatalities: 238

238 Cost: $988.3 million

Heavy thunderstorms struck the Rapid City region of South Dakota on June 9, 1972, and because of strong easterly winds, the storm system stayed over the area. Flood water from various creeks emptied into Rapid Creek, swelling that body of water to more than 300 times its regular volume. According to the NWS, data from the stream meter on Rapid Creek above Canyon Lake showed that in a two-hour span the water level climbed 12 feet. The dam at Canyon Lake failed, and water rushed through Rapid City and the eastern foothills of the Black Hills.

15. Mississippi flood

Affected area: Mississippi River region

Mississippi River region Date of event: 1927

1927 Fatalities: 246

246 Cost: $41.7 billion

People living along the Mississippi River know it floods often -- and they have learned to live with it. But no one was ready for what historians called one of the greatest peacetime disasters in U.S. history in April 1927. The Great Mississippi River Flood engulfed 16 million acres and displaced about 640,000 people from Illinois to Louisiana. In Vicksburg, Mississippi, the river swelled to 80 miles wide.

There were other consequences from the deluge. African Americans living in the flood zone were forced to leave their homes in the South, and the flood hastened what would become known as the Great Migration to northern cities as African Americans sought a better life.

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14. Hurricane Camille and flooding

Affected area: East Coast

East Coast Date of event: 1969

1969 Fatalities: 256

256 Cost: $9.70 billion

Hurricane Camille was a category 5 hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast of Mississippi on Aug. 17, 1969 and brought tremendous storm surge to the region. A storm tide of greater than 24 feet overflowed the town of Pass Christian, Mississippi. At the time, storm surges along that area of the Gulf Coast were the highest ever recorded in the United States. In addition to the 256 people who were killed, 20,000 were left homeless, and thousands of farm and domestic animals were drowned.

13. Brazos River flood

Affected area: Freeport, Texas

Freeport, Texas Date of event: 1899

1899 Fatalities: 284

284 Cost: $271.0 million

Rain fell on the Brazos River region for 11 straight days beginning June 17, 1899. Rainfall totals reached almost 9 inches that week across 66,000 square miles of Texas. The Brazos River overflowed its banks and flooded the surrounding area for 12,000 square miles. In July, flood waters would rise over 58 feet in the town of Richmond. It wouldn’t be the last flood-related tragedy to befall the region.

12. Oregon Heppner flash flood

Affected area: Heppner, Oregon

Heppner, Oregon Date of event: 1903

1903 Fatalities: 324

324 Cost: Unknown

A brief, hard rain and hail in the Blue Mountains triggered a sudden and deadly flash flood through Heppner, Oregon, on June 14, 1903, drowning 324 people. Waters rose up to 40 feet high and saturated the town. The death toll would have been much higher, but towns in the path of those waters were warned ahead of time and residents were able to evacuate. It’s unclear exactly how much rain fell during the disaster because the local weather station was destroyed in the flood.

11. Miami hurricane and flooding

Affected area: Florida Atlantic Coast

Florida Atlantic Coast Date of event: 1926

1926 Fatalities: 372

372 Cost: $1.49 billion

It was bad enough that the Florida real estate market had collapsed in the mid-1920s, but then one of the worst storms ever blasted Florida and the Atlantic Coast on Sept. 18, 1926. The tempest brought deadly storm surge and flooding to the hurricane-prone area. A tidal wave swept over Miami Beach and Biscayne Bay, and boats were scattered all over the city. The storm left 372 people dead and up to 6,000 injured. There had been some advance warning of the approaching hurricane from reports from ships in the area, but in 1926, few people had radios and there were few methods to pass along the warning to the population. Property damage was the highest in U.S. history to that point.

10. The Ohio River Flood

Affected area: Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois

Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois Date of event: 1937

1937 Fatalities: 385

385 Cost: $151.6 billion

How bad was the Ohio River Flood in 1937? The NWS said the deluge “surpassed all previous floods during the 175 years of civilized occupancy of the lower Ohio Valley.” The flood started in late January 1937 and was bolstered by record rainfall in river cities such as Louisville, Kentucky (20 inches); Evansville, Indiana (15 inches); and Cincinnati, Ohio (14 inches). The NWS said 70% of Louisville was under water. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that one-fifth of Cincinnati was under water. The nightmare got worse -- as the water rose, gas tanks exploded and oil fires ignited along the river.

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9. Labor Day Hurricane

Affected area: Florida Keys, Florida

Florida Keys, Florida Date of event: 1935

1935 Fatalities: 500

500 Cost: Unknown

The 1920s were a difficult time to live in Florida because of the real estate collapse and severe weather events, and the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 brought even more misery to the Sunshine State. The category 5 tempest devastated the Florida Keys, producing a storm surge of up to 20 feet above sea level. The railroad connecting the Keys to the mainland was destroyed. Among the scores who died were World War I veterans who were building a highway and living in federal rehabilitation camps. After the storm, Ernest Hemingway traveled to the Keys to help with the recovery. What he saw prompted him to write a scathing magazine article titled "Who Killed the Vets?"

8. St. Francis Dam failure

Affected area: Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California Date of event: 1928

1928 Fatalities: 400-600

400-600 Cost: $291.8 million

The St. Francis Dam failure was the second-worst disaster in California’s history after the San Francisco Earthquake and among the greatest dam catastrophes in the U.S. history. Built in 1926, the dam was the creation of self-taught civil engineer William Mulholland. The 1,300-foot dam held more than 12 billion gallons of water, enough to supply Los Angeles for a year. But there were integrity issues of the dam from the beginning. On the morning of March 12, 1928, the dam keeper noticed muddy leaks emerging from the dam. He summoned Mulholland and his chief assistant, who inspected the dam and said it was safe. Twelve hours later, the dam keeper and his 6-year-old son would be the first drowning victims after the dam gave way. The wall of water would surge 54 miles until it reached the Pacific Ocean.

7. Statewide Ohio flood

Affected area: Ohio

Ohio Date of event: 1913

1913 Fatalities: 467

467 Cost: $82.4 billion

The worst weather event in Ohio history occurred in late March 1913, killing 467 people and flooding 40,000 homes. Excessive rainfall all over the state caused the flood. In Dayton, swiftly flowing water as deep as 10 feet deep swept through downtown streets, killing 123 people. Downstream on the Miami River, 100 more people died in Hamilton, where water rose to as much as 18 feet deep. Another 100 people died in Columbus, where survivors were plucked from trees and rooftops. At Cincinnati, the Ohio River rose 21 feet in 24 hours. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the calamity, flood control reservoirs were established by the Miami Conservancy District after the flood of 1913.

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6. New England hurricane and flooding

Affected area: New England, Long Island

New England, Long Island Date of event: 1938

1938 Fatalities: 700

700 Cost: $5.44 billion

On Sept. 21, 1938, one of the most famous nor’easters of all time destroyed much of eastern Long Island before it unleashed its wrath on New England. It was a fast-moving storm that the NWS said was moving at 47 mph, and it produced up to 7 inches of rainfall. Tidal waves at least 50 feet high, as recorded in Gloucester, Massachusetts, overwhelmed unprotected beaches, and the deluge turned cottages into matchsticks. The region’s deadliest disaster claimed at least 700 lives, and 2,000 others were injured. More than 63,000 people were made homeless. Almost 20,000 buildings were destroyed, and 100 bridges had to be reconstructed.

5. Hurricane Katrina flooding

Affected area: Southern Louisiana

Southern Louisiana Date of event: 2005

2005 Fatalities: 1,833

1,833 Cost: $103.9 billion

Part of the tragedy of Katrina is tied to how humans have altered the landscape around New Orleans. New Orleans was once above sea level when French settlers first arrived there 300 years ago, but swamp drainage has caused the city to sink. The areas below sea level, those most at risk to flooding, have generally been home to the city’s poorest residents. What's more, New Orleans relied on a system of levees and seawalls built by the Army Corps of Engineers to keep the city from flooding. But when Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, the levees failed. As a result, 80% of the city flooded. It was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

4. South Carolina Sea Islands hurricane

Affected area: Sea Islands

Sea Islands Date of event: 1893

1893 Fatalities: 2,000+

2,000+ Cost: $27.9 million

In the late 19th century, people lacked the kind of weather prediction and warning system we have today. It was for this reason that South Carolina, and in particular the Sea Islands that form a barrier along the state coastline, were caught unawares by a hurricane on Aug. 27, 1893. The hurricane swept through the sea islands near Savannah, leaving more than 2,000 dead. Most died by drowning. Nearly every building on the Sea Islands was destroyed, and 30,000 people became homeless.

3. Johnstown flood

Affected area: Johnstown, Pennsylvania

Johnstown, Pennsylvania Date of event: 1889

1889 Fatalities: 2,209

2,209 Cost: $12.6 billion

On May 31, 1889, following several days of heavy rain, a dam near Johnstown burst. The size and scope of the flood that ensued is difficult to comprehend even today. Up to 2,209 people died, including 99 entire families. Bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati. Flood lines were marked as high as 89 feet above river level, and the wave that struck Johnstown was said to be 40 feet high. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whose members included industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, owned the dam but managed to avoid liability. Historians and legal experts believe the anger over the failure to find fault in the tragedy led to stricter liability laws in the United States. It was the first major disaster in which the American Red Cross was involved.

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2. South Florida hurricane and flood

Affected area: Lake Okeechobee, Florida

Lake Okeechobee, Florida Date of event: 1928

1928 Fatalities: 2,500-3,000

2,500-3,000 Cost: $1.5 billion

Barely two years after absorbing the impact of a hurricane that ravaged Miami, Florida was whipsawed by another tempest in late September 1928 -- a storm that cost the lives of more people in that state than any other natural weather event. On the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee, about 6,000 people lived in a farming community, and nearly half would perish from the storm. A 5-foot mud dike constructed to hold back Lake Okeechobee gave way, letting loose a tidal wave. There were so many people killed so quickly, and the bodies decomposed so rapidly because of the heat, that the survivors had to burn the corpses. More than 600 of the dead were African Americans who were buried in unmarked graves in a West Palm Beach pauper cemetery.

1. Galveston hurricane and storm surge

Affected area: Galveston, Texas

Galveston, Texas Date of event: 1900

1900 Fatalities: 8,000

8,000 Cost: $602.3 million

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. It’s believed that 8,000 people were killed in the high winds, 15-foot storm surge, and flooding brought on by the category 4 hurricane. But the actual number could be as many as 12,000 people.

Though the storm was powerful, many of the casualties could have been avoided. The Weather Bureau, which became the National Weather Service, predicted the storm would land much further east. Warnings from Cuba about the storm were ignored by residents and many vacationers, and the city was largely unprepared for the hurricane that slammed into it on Sept. 8, 1900. Galveston was once a booming port city, but the destruction of the hurricane was too much for the city to fully recover from as investors began to favor Houston instead.

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Detailed findings

There are three categories of floods: flash flooding, river flooding, and coastal flooding.

The most lethal of these are flash floods, such as the one that occurred in 1972 in South Dakota that claimed 238 lives. The factors that contribute to flash floods are rainfall intensity and duration. Topography also plays a role -- if the soil is too sodden with moisture, it may not be able to absorb rainfall. Flash flooding also can lead to mudslides, particularly in western states. Steep ravines and canyons can funnel high volumes of water, exacerbating flood intensity, as was the case in Colorado in 1976 in Big Thompson Canyon.

Other reasons for flash flooding are the rupture of a dam, slow-moving storms, or a surge of water released from an ice jam.

Some of the most severe flooding in our nation’s history, such as the disastrous event in 1927, occurred in areas around the Mississippi River. Hurricanes that have ravaged Florida and the Gulf Coast have brought with them storm surges that caused record damage in Louisiana in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina and in Texas just last year with Hurricane Harvey.

Climate change has raised concerns of increased flooding and the impact that flooding from rising sea levels will have on those living on American coasts. Climatologists are concerned that melting snowfields and polar ice caps will cause more runoff and severe weather events, such as storm surges and coastal and river floods.

In some of these catastrophic flood events, human error, neglect, or miscalculation contributed to the scale of the disaster. In the case of the St. Francis Dam in Los Angeles in 1928, structural defects in the dam led to its collapse just two years after it was completed. At least 400 people were killed from the ensuing flood, and the calamity is the second greatest disaster in California history.

The good news is that humankind has become better at understanding the dynamics behind floods, and the use of advanced weather forecasting and satellite tracking can provide early warning. Evacuations ahead of recent hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas helped save lives.

Methodology

24/7 Wall Street compiled a list of the worst floods in U.S. history by the number of fatalities. Floods occur for various reasons -- dams bursting, intense rainfall, massive water runoff from snowmelt, storm surge from hurricanes, even impact from tornadoes. In order to capture the scope of these tragic historical chapters in our nation’s history, we tried to include any and all weather-related events that could have contributed to floods. 24/7 Wall St. used government sources such as the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the United States Geological Survey as well as media reports about the flood events to create the list of the worst floods in U.S. history. Cost of damage was rendered in inflation-adjusted dollars.

24/7 Wall Street is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

ProPublica tax leak story: IRS files show how billionaires pay low tax

Jesse Eisinger, Paul Kiel and Jeff Ernsthausen

ProPublica

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

ProPublica, the investigative newsroom, has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can – perfectly legally – pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. The Secret IRS Files is an ongoing reporting project. Sign up to be notified when the next installment publishes. The Secret IRS Files:See the full series from ProPublica

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.

The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.

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America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly because of the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

No one among the 25 wealthiest avoided as much tax as Buffett. That’s perhaps surprising, given his public stance as an advocate of higher taxes for the rich. According to Forbes, his riches rose $24.3 billion between 2014 and 2018. Over those years, the data shows, Buffett reported paying $23.7 million in taxes.

That works out to a true tax rate of 0.1%, or less than 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth.

Experts have long understood the broad outlines of how little the wealthy are taxed in the United States, and many laypeople have long suspected the same thing.

But few specifics about individuals ever emerge in public. Tax information is among the most zealously guarded secrets in the federal government. ProPublica has decided to reveal individual tax information of some of the wealthiest Americans because it is only by seeing specifics that the public can understand the realities of the country’s tax system.

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Consider Bezos’ 2007, one of the years he paid zero in federal income taxes. Amazon’s stock more than doubled. Bezos’ fortune leapt $3.8 billion, according to Forbes, whose wealth estimates are widely cited. How did a person enjoying that sort of wealth explosion end up paying no income tax?

In that year, Bezos, who filed his taxes jointly with his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, reported a paltry (for him) $46 million in income, largely from interest and dividend payments on outside investments. He was able to offset every penny he earned with losses from side investments and various deductions, like interest expenses on debts and the vague catchall category of “other expenses.”

In 2011, a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money – his income that year was more than offset by investment losses. What’s more, because, according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data. Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number – yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune.

The revelations provided by the IRS data come at a crucial moment. Wealth inequality has become one of the defining issues of our age. The president and Congress are considering the most ambitious tax increases in decades on those with high incomes. But the tax conversation has been dominated by debate over incremental changes, such as whether the top tax rate should be 39.6% rather than 37%.

ProPublica’s data shows that while some wealthy Americans would pay more taxes under the current Biden administration proposals, the vast majority of the top 25 would see little change.

The tax data was provided to ProPublica after we published a series of articles scrutinizing the IRS. The articles exposed how years of budget cuts have hobbled the agency’s ability to enforce the law and how the largest corporations and the rich have benefited from the IRS’ weakness.

ProPublica is not disclosing how it obtained the data, which was given to us in raw form, with no conditions or conclusions. ProPublica reporters spent months verifying, processing and analyzing the material to transform it into a usable database.

Every person whose tax information is described in this story was asked to comment. Those who responded, including Buffett, Bloomberg and Icahn, all said they had paid the taxes they owed.

A spokesman for Soros said in a statement: “Between 2016 and 2018 George Soros lost money on his investments, therefore he did not owe federal income taxes in those years. Mr. Soros has long supported higher taxes for wealthy Americans.” Personal and corporate representatives of Bezos declined to receive detailed questions about the matter. ProPublica attempted to reach Scott through her divorce attorney, a personal representative and family members; she did not respond. Musk responded to an initial query with a lone punctuation mark: “?” After we sent detailed questions to him, he did not reply.

One of the billionaires mentioned in this article objected, arguing that publishing personal tax information is a violation of privacy. We have concluded that the public interest in knowing this information at this pivotal moment outweighs that legitimate concern.

The consequences of allowing the most prosperous to game the tax system have been profound. Federal budgets, apart from military spending, have been constrained for decades. Roads and bridges have crumbled, social services have withered and the solvency of Social Security and Medicare is perpetually in question.

There is an even more fundamental issue than which programs get funded or not: Taxes are a kind of collective sacrifice. No one loves giving their hard-earned money to the government. But the system works only as long as it’s perceived to be fair.

Our analysis of tax data for the 25 richest Americans quantifies just how unfair the system has become.

By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion.

For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth.

The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion.

The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion.

—

The ultrawealthy use an array of techniques that aren’t available to those of lesser means to get around the tax system routinely and legally.

Most Americans have to work to live. When they do, they get paid – and they get taxed. The federal government considers almost every dollar workers earn to be “income,” and employers take taxes directly out of their paychecks.

The Bezoses of the world have no need to be paid a salary. Bezos’ Amazon wages have long been set at the middle-class level of around $80,000 a year.

For years, there has been something of a competition among elite founder-CEOs to go even lower. Steve Jobs took $1 in salary when he returned to Apple in the 1990s. Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Google’s Larry Page have all done the same.

Yet this is not the self-effacing gesture it appears to be: Wages are taxed at a high rate. The top 25 wealthiest Americans reported $158 million in wages in 2018, according to the IRS data. That’s a mere 1.1% of what they listed on their tax forms as their total reported income. The rest mostly came from dividends and the sale of stock, bonds or other investments, which are taxed at lower rates than wages.

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The ultrawealthy typically hold fast to shares in the companies they’ve founded. Buffett, for example, has famously held onto his stock in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate that owns Geico, Duracell and stakes in American Express and Coca-Cola. That has allowed Buffett to largely avoid transforming his wealth into income. From 2015 through 2018, he reported annual income ranging from $11.6 million to $25 million. That may seem like a lot, but Buffett ranks as roughly the world’s sixth-richest person – he’s worth $110 billion as of Forbes’ estimate in May 2021. At least 14,000 U.S. taxpayers in 2015 reported higher income than him, according to IRS data.

There’s also a second strategy Buffett relies on that minimizes income, and therefore, taxes. Berkshire does not pay a dividend, the sum (a piece of the profits, in theory) that many companies pay each quarter to those who own their stock. Buffett has always argued that it is better to use that money to find investments for Berkshire that will further boost the value of shares held by him and other investors. If Berkshire had offered anywhere close to the average dividend in recent years, Buffett would have received over $1 billion in dividend income and owed hundreds of millions in taxes each year.

Many Silicon Valley and infotech companies have emulated Buffett’s model. In the 1980s and 1990s, companies like Microsoft and Oracle offered shareholders rocketing growth and profits but did not pay dividends. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Tesla do not pay dividends.

In a detailed written response, Buffett defended his practices. “I continue to believe that the tax code should be changed substantially,” he wrote, adding that he thought “huge dynastic wealth is not desirable for our society.”

The decision not to have Berkshire pay dividends has been supported by the vast majority of his shareholders. “I can’t think of any large public company with shareholders so united in their reinvestment beliefs,” he wrote. And he pointed out that Berkshire Hathaway pays significant corporate taxes, accounting for 1.5% of total U.S. corporate taxes in 2019 and 2020.

Buffett reiterated that he has begun giving his enormous fortune away and ultimately plans to donate 99.5% of it to charity. “I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing U.S. debt,” he wrote.

Buy, borrow, die: How America’s ultrawealthy stay that way

So how do megabillionaires pay their megabills while opting for $1 salaries and hanging onto their stock? According to public documents and experts, the answer for some is borrowing money – lots of it.

For regular people, borrowing money is often done out of necessity, say for a car or a home. But for the ultrawealthy, it can be a way to access billions without producing income, and thus, income tax.

The tax math provides a clear incentive. If you own a company and take a huge salary, you’ll pay 37% in income tax on the bulk of it. Sell stock and you’ll pay 20% in capital gains tax – and lose some control over your company. But take out a loan, and these days you’ll pay a single-digit interest rate and no tax; since loans must be paid back, the IRS doesn’t consider them income. Banks typically require collateral, but the wealthy have plenty of that.

One example: Last year Tesla reported that Musk had pledged some 92 million shares, which were worth about $57.7 billion as of May 29, 2021, as collateral for personal loans.

With the exception of one year when he exercised more than a billion dollars in stock options, Musk’s tax bills in no way reflect the fortune he has at his disposal. In 2015, he paid $68,000 in federal income tax. In 2017, it was $65,000, and in 2018 he paid no federal income tax. Between 2014 and 2018, he had a true tax rate of 3.27%.

The IRS records provide glimpses of other massive loans. In 2016 and 2017, investor Carl Icahn, who ranks as the 40th-wealthiest American on the Forbes list, paid no federal income taxes despite reporting a total of $544 million in adjusted gross income (which the IRS defines as earnings minus items like student loan interest payments or alimony). Icahn had an outstanding loan of $1.2 billion with Bank of America among other loans, according to the IRS data. It was technically a mortgage because it was secured, at least in part, by Manhattan penthouse apartments and other properties.

Borrowing offers multiple benefits to Icahn: It gives him cash to turbocharge his investment returns. Then he gets to deduct the interest from his taxes. In an interview, Icahn explained that he reports the profits and losses of his business empire on his personal taxes.

Icahn acknowledged that he is a “big borrower. I do borrow a lot of money.” Asked if he takes out loans also to lower his tax bill, Icahn said: “No, not at all. My borrowing is to win.”

He said adjusted gross income was a misleading figure for him. After taking hundreds of millions in deductions for the interest on his loans, he registered tax losses for both years, he said. “I didn’t make money because, unfortunately for me, my interest was higher than my whole adjusted income.”

Asked whether it was appropriate that he had paid no income tax in certain years, Icahn said he was perplexed by the question. “There’s a reason it’s called income tax,” he said. “The reason is if, if you’re a poor person, a rich person, if you are Apple – if you have no income, you don’t pay taxes.” He added: “Do you think a rich person should pay taxes no matter what? I don’t think it’s germane. How can you ask me that question?”

—

It is true that some billionaires don’t avoid taxes by avoiding incomes. In 2018, nine of the 25 wealthiest Americans reported more than $500 million in income and three more than $1 billion.

In such cases, though, the data obtained by ProPublica shows billionaires have a palette of tax-avoidance options to offset their gains using credits, deductions (which can include charitable donations) or losses to lower or even zero out their tax bills.

Michael Bloomberg, the 13th-richest American on the Forbes list, often reports high income because the profits of the private company he controls flow mainly to him.

In 2018, he reported income of $1.9 billion. When it came to his taxes, Bloomberg managed to slash his bill by using deductions made possible by tax cuts passed during the Trump administration, charitable donations of $968.3 million and credits for having paid foreign taxes. The end result was that he paid $70.7 million in income tax on that almost $2 billion in income. That amounts to just a 3.7% conventional income tax rate. Between 2014 and 2018, Bloomberg had a true tax rate of 1.30%.

In a statement, a spokesman for Bloomberg noted that as a candidate, Bloomberg had advocated tax hikes on the wealthy. “Mike Bloomberg pays the maximum tax rate on all federal, state, local and international taxable income as prescribed by law,” the spokesman wrote. And he cited Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving, offering the calculation that “taken together, what Mike gives to charity and pays in taxes amounts to approximately 75% of his annual income.”

The statement also noted: “The release of a private citizen’s tax returns should raise real privacy concerns regardless of political affiliation or views on tax policy. In the United States no private citizen should fear the illegal release of their taxes. We intend to use all legal means at our disposal to determine which individual or government entity leaked these and ensure that they are held responsible.”

Ultimately, after decades of wealth accumulation, the estate tax is supposed to serve as a backstop, allowing authorities an opportunity to take a piece of giant fortunes before they pass to a new generation. But in reality, preparing for death is more like the last stage of tax avoidance for the ultrawealthy.

The notion of dying as a tax benefit seems paradoxical. Normally when someone sells an asset, even a minute before they die, they owe 20% capital gains tax. But at death, that changes. Any capital gains till that moment are not taxed. This allows the ultrarich and their heirs to avoid paying billions in taxes. The “step-up in basis” is widely recognized by experts as a flaw in the code.

Then comes the estate tax, which, at 40%, is among the highest in the federal code.

It’s clear, though, from aggregate IRS data, tax research and what little trickles into the public arena about estate planning of the wealthy that they can readily escape turning over almost half of the value of their estates. Many of the richest create foundations for philanthropic giving, which provide large charitable tax deductions during their lifetimes and bypass the estate tax when they die.

The result is that large fortunes can pass largely intact from one generation to the next. Of the 25 richest people in America today, about a quarter are heirs: three are Waltons, two are scions of the Mars candy fortune, and one is the son of Estée Lauder.

—

In the past year and a half, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from COVID-19, while millions were thrown out of work. But one of the bleakest periods in American history turned out to be one of the most lucrative for billionaires. They added $1.2 trillion to their fortunes from January 2020 to the end of April of this year, according to Forbes.

That windfall is among many factors that have led the country to an inflection point, one in which higher taxes for the wealthy are a political possibility.

Buffett is one seemingly surprising advocate for that view. In a New York Times op-ed in 2011, he wrote, “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” In that article Buffett publicly revealed how much he had paid in personal federal taxes the previous year ($6.9 million).

In 2011, President Barack Obama proposed legislation, known as the Buffett Rule. It would have raised income tax rates on people reporting more than $1 million a year. It didn’t pass. Even if it had, however, the Buffett Rule wouldn’t have raised Buffett’s taxes significantly. If you can avoid income, you can avoid taxes.

The Biden administration has proposed raising the tax rates on people making over $400,000 and bumping the top income tax rate from 37% to 39.6%. The administration also wants to raise the corporate tax rate and increase the IRS’ budget. Some Democrats have gone further, floating ideas, such as wealth taxes, that challenge the tax structure.

A few countries, including Switzerland and Spain, have wealth taxes on a small scale. Several, most recently France, have abandoned them as unworkable. Opponents contend they are complicated to administer, as it is hard to value assets, particularly of private companies and property.

The ProPublica data illuminates how comprehensively the wealthiest Americans avoid paying taxes, a secret Buffett and his fellow billionaires have known for a long time. As Buffett put it in 2011: “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.”

Contributing: Doris Burke, Carson Kessler and Ellis Simani

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Kingston coal ash spill: 5 years, $1 billion in cleanup and no ...

Duane W. Gang

dgang@tennessean.com

5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled

More coal ash spilled than oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident two years later

Cleanup costs estimated at %241.2 billion

As Tommy Charles looks out of his dining room window, it's easy to see why he and his wife moved to Lakeshore Drive in Harriman nearly 50 years ago.

The Emory River widens as it passes his house. Great blue herons glide above the placid, gray water. It's an idyllic place to live and raise a family.

Because others saw the same potential, the neighborhood grew to more than 25 homes. No one seemed to mind the Tennessee Valley Authority power plant looming just a short distance away.

That was how things were, at least, before the early morning hours of Dec. 22, 2008. When a dike failed at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant, 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash cascaded into the Emory and Clinch rivers and smothered some 300 acres of land.

The breach released a gooey, slow-moving wave of toxic sludge and polluted water into the river. It snapped trees as if they were twigs and knocked homes off their foundations. It destroyed three houses and damaged dozens of others. In the short run, at least, there were no injuries.

Although Charles' home and most of the others on Lakeshore Drive were undamaged, he is the only resident left.

The last holdout.

As it launched a massive cleanup effort, TVA bought out the entire neighborhood — all but Charles' house — and turned the area into a park. His reasons for staying are simple — and yet not so easy to explain.

Bigger than Deepwater Horizon accident

But now, five years after one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the United States, the area around his home offers one more reminder of how much has changed — and maybe of how much has not.

More coal ash spilled at Kingston than oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico two years later. Enough muck spewed forth to fill a single football field, including end zones, more than 2,500 feet into the air. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation hit TVA with an $11.5 million fine, the largest ever for state regulators.

To clean up the spill and restore the area, TVA has spent $1 billion. Agency officials say they are on pace to spend nearly $200 million more by the time the project wraps up in 2015.

But the legacy of the Kingston spill goes far beyond the Emory and Clinch rivers. Beyond Lakeshore Drive and Charles' neighborhood. Beyond Harriman and the state of Tennessee.

The spill prompted TVA and other utilities across the nation to re-evaluate how they store coal ash, a byproduct from burning coal to produce electricity. The material contains arsenic, selenium, mercury and other pollutants — all harmful to people and wildlife when found in high concentrations.

Congress held hearings in the aftermath. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules regulating coal ash, including classifying it as a hazardous material.

"Kingston was a dramatic statement of the costs of using coal," said Paul Sloan, who was a deputy commissioner at TDEC at the time of the accident.

But five years on, it's not clear what lessons were learned. Coal ash remains largely unregulated. The EPA and Congress have not yet acted to strengthen oversight of the material. Industry groups and some lawmakers continue to oppose classifying coal ash as hazardous.

"The jury is still out on whether we will get the protections we need to prevent this from happening again," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a longtime TVA watchdog group. "The final chapter hasn't been written."

'I couldn't believe it'

Charles, 74, remembers waking up five years ago to a catastrophe.

"A neighbor friend, he heard about it," Charles recalled recently. "As soon as I got out and moved around, I saw that mess. I couldn't believe it."

The coal ash came up both channels of the Emory River around the peninsula where Charles lives. It ripped Charles' small boat from its moorings.

Tom Grizzard, 73, remembers that night, too. He lives just a few miles away and drove down toward the spill that morning. Ash and mud were everywhere. Dead fish in people's yards.

"It was a mess," Grizzard said. "They screwed up."

In the years since the spill, Charles and Grizzard have watched TVA work to clean up the area. They said TVA has done a good job. It just shouldn't have happened in the first place.

"I will say this: They put a lot of people to work," Grizzard said. "But we as people are paying for it."

TVA began dredging in March 2009 and eventually removed 3 million cubic yards of coal ash and other debris. That took more than a year. Train load after train load — 414 in all — hauled the coal ash to a landfill in Alabama over 18 months.

The utility then built a new 240-acre landfill to replace the one that failed. It will store the remaining ash from the spill. The ash was dried first, and the new landfill has liners to prevent leaks. It includes a massive retaining wall 70 feet into the ground.

Work on the new landfill is in its final stages as crews continue to cap it and plant grass on top. The new landfill is designed to prevent a repeat of 2008. Five years ago, the coal ash was too wet, stacked too high and placed upon a poor foundation. All of those were factors in the dike failure. There were two earlier leaks elsewhere on site — clear warning signs.

"In total it will be a six-year job," said Craig Zeller, the EPA's project manager overseeing the recovery work. "As far as superfund responses, it is among the largest we've got, at least in (the Southeast), if not in the country."

Once TVA got organized, Smith said the agency did a "reasonably good" job getting the coal ash out of the river.

"I don't know whether it was perfect. There was almost no way you could get an A because of the complexity of it," he said. "It was enough for us that we did not follow through on our Clean Water Act lawsuit."

Beyond the ash itself, TVA did a $40 million study to determine the residual effects on the environment and wildlife from the spill and what ash remains in the rivers. About 500,000 cubic yards of ash remain. It has mixed with decades-old radioactive pollution from the Department of Energy's nearby nuclear reservation in Oak Ridge, making it too risky, difficult and expensive to remove.

The study found no major risks from the remaining ash, but TVA is required to monitor wildlife for the next 30 years.

TVA also has pledged $43 million in support to Roane County, $32 million of which has been invested at nine area schools. The agency also has built a park and walking trails where the Lakeshore Drive neighborhood once stood and will provide land to the county for ball fields and recreational facilities.

Harriman Mayor Chris Mason said two stories emerged from the Kingston spill. After seeing images from the spill, many across the country might think the area would no longer be a place where people would want to live, he said.

"Please don't misunderstand me and think that what happened wasn't bad because it was," he said. "But Roane County was and is still a fantastic place to live. The TVA coupled with the EPA have done and are doing a good job with the cleanup, and I believe that the area, especially the immediate area, will be a very nice place to be."

A disaster that resonates

The ripple effects from the spill have been felt far from the site, not just for TVA but for state regulators and utilities nationwide. TVA has pledged up to $2 billion to convert from wet coal ash to dry storage, a far safer way to handle the material.

Two utilities in South Carolina are voluntarily removing coal ash from storage sites near waterways. North Carolina has sued a major power provider over pollutants leaking from coal ash storage ponds.

But some environmental groups say more should be done. There are hundreds of coal ash impoundments around the nation, and the EPA has found dozens that it believes are leaking.

More uniform regulations are needed on how coal ash is stored, said Frank Holleman, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, N.C. Municipal landfills often face tougher rules, and regulations on coal ash vary by state.

Holleman said the utilities are using 21st-century technology to remove pollutants from the air to meet new, more stringent emissions standards. But the industry is using 13th-century technology to store coal ash, he said.

"The Romans would have done a better job than we are doing with this stuff," he said.

The EPA also should classify the material based on its danger, he said. The Southern Environmental Law Center supports making coal ash a hazardous substance.

Some utilities have recognized the need to make changes. Others, he said, should do the same before another Kingston takes place.

"I would hate to go to bed each night as a CEO, executive or board member of a company storing millions of tons of coal ash in a wet state. … If that breaks, I have huge personal legal liability. Kingston put that on the map."

Thomas Adams, executive director of the American Coal Ash Association, which supports recycling the material, said the the waste shouldn't be classified as hazardous. It can be recycled and used in road construction products, roofing and more.

Considering it hazardous would halt those recycling efforts, he said. Even the prospect of new EPA rules has already hurt the recycling market.

A powerful group of senators in 2010 — including Tennessee Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker — wrote to then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson urging her not to follow through on the proposal.

In a recent meeting with The Tennessean's editorial board, Alexander said the spill was a "supreme embarrassment for TVA."

And although the utility is doing a good job cleaning up, it is costing ratepayers, money he said that could have instead gone toward reducing rates, boosting economic development or buying new pollution-control equipment.

Regulating coal ash as a hazardous material isn't the right approach, Alexander said.

"You can turn coal ash into products that can be sold commercially," he said.

He said states are capable of regulating the material and making polluters clean up after accidents.

Although the coal ash association does not support EPA's proposal to classify coal ash as a hazardous material, better regulation is needed, Adams said. The association supports legislation sponsored by Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va.

The bill, passed by the House this year, would establish minimum requirements for the management and disposal of coal ash, including the structural integrity of coal ash landfills and groundwater monitoring. "It provides real protections and provides it in a reasonable manner," Adams said.

The proposal, though, would strip the EPA of its authority to regulate coal ash as a hazardous material, and environmental groups oppose it.

The EPA said Thursday that it will finalize the rule after completing a full evaluation of all of the 450,000 comments and other data it has received. A recent federal court decision requires the EPA to submit a schedule for final action by Saturday.

A quieter place

Back near the Kingston power plant, the landscape has changed. Trucks continue to roll down the road. Bulldozers rumble across the landscape.

But in many ways, the area is quieter than five years ago.

TVA bought 180 properties and 960 acres from private landowners in the wake of the spill. Agency officials said the utility bought the land because of ash in the water and the nuisance from what will be six years of recovery work. TVA also bought the land to expand the power plant site.

All the offers, TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said, were voluntary and made based on assessments of damage and impacts from the recovery work. The prospect of lawsuits loomed.

Charles and his wife, Carolyn, the lone holdouts on Lakeshore Drive, received a settlement from TVA and agreed not to sue, but they declined to disclose the amount.

Money was never the issue, Charles insists. The house was paid for. Charles and his wife could have sold out and moved.

Inside the ranch home, Charles shows a faded picture of the house when he first bought it in the spring of 1964. He takes a step down into the master bedroom, once the garage, and explains how he built the bedroom suite himself. He pulls out a drawer, revealing his signature on the back.

When TVA officials approached him about the sale, Charles declined.

"Listen, I said, 'You could offer $1 million and I said it is still not for sale.' "

Charles admits he can get worked up when talking about TVA. Still, he said, he doesn't begrudge those who took the buyouts.

It just wasn't right for him. None of them had been here as long.

"They wouldn't have 30, 40 years of love in the house," he said.

The more he and his wife thought about it, the harder it seemed to sell and move on. The question that loomed largest in their minds: Where else would they go?

Standing in his driveway, struggling to explain, tears fill his eyes. He turns away. All he can muster are two simple words.

"It's home," he whispered. "It's home."

Contact Duane Gang at 615-726-5982 or dgang@tennessean.com.

Harriman, Tenn.

5.4 million cubic yards

The amount of spilled coal ash

3 million

cubic yards

The amount of coal ash that dredging removed

240 acres

The size of a new landfill that will contain dry coal ash

Before and after

Lakeshore Drive in Harriman once had more than 25 homes (above left). TVA bought all but one and razed them after the Dec. 22, 2008, coal ash spill at its Kingston Fossil Plant (above right). Tommy Charles, 74, is the remaining holdout. "It had been paid for for years, so money wasn't the issue," he said of his home, which he and his wifebought 50 years ago this spring. "We didn't have a clue where we would start looking. Plus, at 74, the process of moving your stuff, I just couldn't think about it."

Source: Microsoft; Google Maps

Online at Tennessean.com/Kingston

» Interactive before-and-after photos of the spill site

» A video highlighting the recovery effort today

» A WBIR-Knoxville newscast from Dec. 22, 2008

» Video of the recovery effort one year after the spill in 2009

A timeline of the Credit Suisse scandals | The Week UK

Leaked details from more than 18,000 accounts at one of the world’s biggest private banks have revealed an extensive list of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, human rights abuses and other serious crimes.

The accounts hold more than 100bn Swiss francs at one of Switzerland’s “best-known financial institutions”, Credit Suisse bank, reported The Guardian.

The leaks point to “widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse, despite repeated pledges over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds”, said the paper, which was part of a consortium of 48 media outlets given exclusive access to the data.

Analysis reveals how Credit Suisse “repeatedly either opened or maintained bank accounts for a panoramic array of high-risk clients across the world”. These included “a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange boss jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese pop star girlfriend and executives who looted Venezuela’s state oil company, as well as corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine”, said the paper.

The information was initially leaked to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous whistleblower, who said Swiss banking laws were “immoral”.

The paper then partnered with many media companies across the world to investigate the data linked to tens of thousands of accounts, some of which go “as far back as the 1940s” and “more than two-thirds of which had been opened since 2000”, with many still open today.

The bank has said it “strongly rejects” the allegations against it, arguing that reporting has been based on “selective information taken out of context, resulting in tendentious interpretations of the bank’s business conduct”.

But the data leak is far from the only scandal to hit the financial institution in recent years. The Week takes a look at some of the biggest controversies the beleaguered bank has had to weather.

Chairman resigns for breaking Covid rules Antonio Horta-Osorio resigned as Credit Suisse chairman on 17 January 2022 after “repeated breaches” of Covid-19 quarantine rules, less than a year after taking up the role. An investigation by the bank’s board found that Horta-Osorio, the former chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, had broken quarantine rules several times, “including on a trip to London last year to watch the Wimbledon tennis finals”, reported the Financial Times. His exit was a “severe embarrassment” for the Credit Suisse, which recruited the Portuguese banker to “help reset its strategy” after previous scandals “damaged the bank’s reputation for risk management and raised questions over its leadership”, said the paper. Credit Suisse immediately appointed board member Axel Lehmann as its chairman, who had been “at the helm for only five weeks” before the massive data leak, said The Guardian.

Tuna bonds scandal The Swiss bank was fined nearly £350m by global regulators in October 2021 after pleading guilty to wire fraud in a long-running scandal that pushed the country of Mozambique “into a financial crisis”, reported The Guardian. The so-called “tuna bonds scandal” arose from $1.3bn (£940m) worth of loans that Credit Suisse arranged for the Republic of Mozambique between 2012 and 2016, supposedly aimed at “government-sponsored investment schemes including maritime security projects and a state tuna fishery”. But “a portion of the funds were unaccounted for”, said the paper, and one of Mozambique’s contractors was later found to have covertly arranged hefty kickbacks “worth at least $137m, including $50m for bankers at Credit Suisse meant to secure more favourable deals on the loans”, regulators found. The international scam then “snowballed” leading the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to suspend its assistance to Mozambique, ultimately causing a financial crisis in the country.

Default of Archegos hedge fund The bank lost $5.5bn when Archegos Capital Management collapsed in early 2021. The US hedge fund’s “highly leveraged bets on certain technology stocks backfired and the value of its portfolio with Credit Suisse plummeted”, explained Reuters. An independent report into Credit Suisse’s involvement with the risky hedge fund “slammed the bank’s conduct” and found that its losses were the result of “a fundamental failure of management and control at its investment bank, and its prime brokerage division in particular”, said the news agency. It said the bank was “focused on maximising short-term profits” ultimately failing to “rein in voracious risk-taking” by the fund “despite numerous warning signals”.

Greensill Capital collapse The bank was forced to suspend $10bn of investor funds in March 2021 when the British supply-chain lender Greensill Capital collapsed. Credit Suisse had “sold billions of dollars of Greensill’s debt to investors, assuring them in marketing material that the high-yield notes were low risk because the underlying credit exposure was fully insured”, said Reuters. Several investors have sued the bank over the Greensill-linked funds, with the bank still in the process of trying to “claw back money for clients”, said The Guardian. The bank said in September last year that it had returned about $6.3bn to investors, but has warned it may not be able to reccover another $2.3bn of losses.

Corporate spying Credit Suisse’s former chief executive Tidjane Thiam was forced to leave the bank in March 2020 after an investigation found that it had spied on two of its employees. The bank hired private detectives to follow Iqbal Khan, its former head of wealth management who was leaving to join its arch-rival UBS, and on Peter Goerke, its former head of human resources. Credit Suisse “repeatedly played down” the spying allegations but in October last year the Swiss Financial market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) said that the bank had planned spying operations on “seven occasions between 2016 and 2019, and carried out most of them”, reported Euronews.

US sanction breaches Credit Suisse was fined $536m in 2009 for violating US sanctions against Iran and several other countries, including Libya, Sudan, Burma and Cuba, between 1995 and 2007. The US Justice Department said that the bank had “processed payments allowing those countries access to American financial institutions – a practice that Washington had banned”, explained Deutsche Welle. It was the “biggest such fine in the history of violations of US sanctions” and had the bank not cooperated, authorities said they would have “had to pay even more”, said the German news site at the time.

Data breach Yahoo: 3 billion user accounts hacked in 2013

SAN FRANCISCO – All 3 billion of Yahoo’s users as of 2013 were affected by a data theft the company originally said had only affected 1 billion users, Yahoo's new parent said Tuesday.

That makes the Yahoo hack far and away the largest in history, and further dents the reputation of an Internet pioneer that was forced to sell itself off after a succession of CEOs failed to revitalize its user and revenue growth as Facebook and Google grew to dominate the digital ad market.

The biggest data breaches and hacks of all time

The additional two billion data theft victims came to light as Yahoo was being integrated with Verizon, which bought the company in June for $4.5 billion after shaving the price in light of earlier-disclosed breaches.

"During integration, the company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft," the company said in a statement posted on its website Tuesday.

More:Follow USA TODAY Money and Tech on Facebook

Verizon negotiated down its purchase price for Yahoo by $350 million because of two massive breaches the online media company suffered. The first, in 2013, was believed to be the largest reported data breach ever, involving the theft of data associated with more than one billion user accounts. Yahoo revealed that breach in December 2016.

The other breach, which occurred in 2014 and was revealed by Yahoo in September 2016, affected at least 500 million Yahoo accounts and was believed to have been the work of a state-sponsored actor. Four people, including two Russian intelligence officers, were charged in that attack.

More:There's no law they can pass against stupid, House committee tells ex Equifax CEO

More:A timeline of events surrounding the Equifax data breach

More:Equifax breach hit 2.5 million more Americans than first believed

The revelation is black eye for new parent Verizon, particularly with cybersecurity risks in the limelight after the Equifax breach.

It could have been worse: the stolen information was mostly confined to the users' ID's on Yahoo and their email addresses, but did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information.

Yahoo said it would send email notifications to the additional affected user accounts.

The company, then run by CEO Marissa Mayer, disclosed in November that law enforcement officials had given it data files showing what appeared to be evidence that an unknown third party had access to Yahoo user data.

At the time, Yahoo brought in outside forensic experts and confirmed that the data was in fact from Yahoo users. It later said a breach affected more than one billion user accounts.

Yahoo said in 2016 it did not know who was behind the theft.

The company said that the attackers stole the user information from its system in August 2013. However it didn't know when they had gained entry to its network or how long they were there before they stole the user information.

More:FBI is investigating massive Yahoo breach

Contributing: Mike Snider in Tysons Corner, Va.

How to stop your smartphone apps from tracking your every move

Kim Komando

Special to USA TODAY

We used to download apps, enable permissions, and share data without giving it a second thought. These days, most people want more control over their info.

That starts with protecting yourself from endless data breaches, leaks, and hacks. When was the last time you checked to make sure your info isn't floating around the web for anyone to find? Tap or click to check your email address against a database of major hacks.

Then you have to deal with the Big Tech giants. It’s hard to do much online without Google and Facebook knowing about it. Tap or click here for critical settings everyone should adjust to protect their privacy.

And what about all those apps on your phone? It’s easier than ever to see if they know exactly where you are – and stop it if you want to.

Your location is yours to protect

Some apps need to know where you are to work correctly. Many that don't need this information, request access, and you probably said yes when you installed it.

On your iPhone or iPad, follow these steps to change your overall tracking preference:

• Tap Settings, navigate down to Privacy and tap Location Services.

• If the first slider is turned on, it means that apps can track you.

• Slide it off if you universally want to deny your device from using Location Services.

The list of apps displayed under Location Services has access to your location and how frequently it is used. Tap on a specific app if you want to change the settings. You can choose Never, Ask Next Time, While Using the App, or Always.

To take advantage of Apple's App Tracking Transparency, change its settings by tapping Settings, tapping Privacy, selecting Tracking, and toggling the Allow Apps to Request to Track off.

On Android, first, check to see which apps have access to your location:

• Swipe down from the top of the screen and press down on Location. If it’s not there, search your Settings menu and find Location.

• Tap App permission. You will see a list of apps that can access your location any time, only while it’s in use, or when you give permission.

You can change app permissions here, or try this method:

• On your home screen, find the app’s icon. Touch and hold the icon for the app you want to adjust.

• Tap the Info icon > Permissions > Location.

• Choose from All the time, Only while using the app, Ask every time, or Deny.

Privacy 101: This hidden map on your phone shows everywhere you've been – and all the photos you took there

Things to keep in mind

Turning off location services disables your smartphone from tracking your location, but there are some disadvantages. The most obvious one is that apps like Maps, Uber and your weather app of choice won’t be able to determine your exact location.

To get around that, you can either change the setting so that apps only use your location when using the app or manually switch it on or off as needed.

Ending location tracking entirely can be a pain. Android and iOS provide built-in options to minimize and limit ad tracking if that’s more your speed.

Want more tips like this in your inbox? Get my Tech Tips newsletter. It’s packed with smart info you can use.

Stop ad tracking, too

These changes won't stop companies from tracking your phone activities. They won't limit the number of ads you see – but they will allow you to reset your advertising ID and unlink any targeted advertising profiles associated with your gadgets.

That means fewer creepy ads that make it clear advertisers know what you are up to online and what your preferences are.

On iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch:

• Go to Settings > Privacy.

• Tap Apple Advertising. Toggle Personalized Ads to Off.

On Android:

• Go to Settings and tap Google.

• Tap Ads. Toggle on Opt out of ads personalization.

Bonus Tip: How the government and companies buy your personal data

Check out my podcast “Kim Komando Explains” on Apple, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast player.

We think of our gadgets as helpful tools that make our lives easier, but they can also be turned against us. The data your devices collect is so valuable it could be used against you in a criminal trial, requested by the police, or even bought by the government through a data broker. I sit down with technologist Bennett Cyphers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and he reveals all the secrets you’re losing – and which devices do the most stealing.

Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for my last name, “Komando.”

Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show, the nation's largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today's digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.