The biggest tech turkeys of 2015
The year's most notable embarrassments in technology run the gamut from the industry's inability to secure our personal data to the blunders of Airbnb, Twitter and Tinder.
- SABEW Best in Business 2011 Award for Breaking News Coverage, Eddie Award in 2020 for 5G coverage, runner-up National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award for culture analysis.
CNET's annual list of tech turkeys takes a look back at some of the biggest blunders of the year. Gobble, gobble.
As Thanksgiving comes and goes, we regularly take a look back at the tech turkeys of the year. This year's flock, though, may stir up memories of Halloween.
It's scary just how vulnerable we are.
In 2015, hackers went to town with seemingly nonstop breaches. Anthem, the big health insurer, fell victim to the theft of personal information of 80 million customers and employees. That's one out of every four Americans. Meanwhile, the identities of 30 million would-be adulterers were revealed after hackers got into Ashley Madison, the cheat-on-your-spouse website.
Companies also had a frightening habit of tripping over themselves. Airbnb insulted its hometown of San Francisco with a billboard campaign that appeared to gripe about paying the taxes it owed for short-term rentals in the city. Sean Rad, CEO of dating-app maker Tinder, meanwhile, demonstrated surprisingly poor knowledge of the English language.
Volkswagen gets a special mention for gaming fuel-emission tests via the software in its cars. And BlackBerry, long proud of going its own way, finds itself pinning its comeback hopes on a phone that leans heavily on software from another company, Alphabet's Google.
Lastly, all of Silicon Valley gets a turkey this year because the tech industry still can't figure out how to hire, retain and promote more women and minorities.
Since innovation apparently can mean figuring out new ways to screw up, we've rounded up a supersized 17 examples of the most cringe-inducing tech turkeys for your holiday entertainment.
