2026Verizon
A software change took Verizon's 5G core down 10 hrs — 2M lost calling, texting and 911
one software change to the 5G coreup to 2 million offline ~10 hours; $20 credits; 911 risk
Learn from mistakes. Preferably other people's.
A working encyclopedia of business blunders
documented casesHow to use it
Planning something? Hand this archive to your AI.
Show it a plan, and it checks these 6228 documented cases for who already made the same mistake, and what it cost them.
2026Tata Communications
A lithium-battery fire in one Tata data hall vaporised 20 years of a client's data
a lithium battery fire in one data hall20+ years of a client's data lost, $2M for one ISP
2026Meta
Meta's 'designed for privacy' glasses shipped users' intimate footage to Kenya reviewers
intimate clips reviewed by humansUS class action, ICO probe, Sama contract cut (~1,000+ jobs)
2026Microsoft
Microsoft 365 falls for five hours after a maintenance bug cut West US off the network
over-scoped automated maintenance change5-hour outage of 365 and Azure, 19 downstream services hit
2026PocketOS
PocketOS gave an AI agent write access to production — it deleted the backups too
AI agent had write access to backups too30+ hour outage; database and backups both destroyed
2025–2026Amazon Web Services
AWS let its AI coding agent Kiro fix a dashboard — it deleted the environment instead
AI agent got unreviewed operator access13-hour outage of AWS Cost Explorer in a China region
2026Telstra
Telstra's missed patch and undocumented fix knocked its network offline nationwide
time server clock reset to 2006nationwide outage affecting ~9 million customers
2026Google Cloud
Google Cloud's Delhi data-centre fire left India's traffic degraded for three weeks
a fire at a third-party Delhi colothree weeks of degraded network across India's cloud region
2018–2026Paytm
Paytm's banking licence, revoked: eight years of warnings ended with the bank wound up
RBI's January 2024 deposit barLicence revoked; bank wound up after ₹5.39 crore fine
2019–2026Jumia
Jumia's stock hit $50, then lost 90% in eight months — growth had outrun the books
Citron short report, 9 May 2019≈90% of market value; exits from 10+ countries; co-CEOs out
2020–2026PayPal
PayPal bought Honey for $4B — then the coupon app stole creators' affiliate commissions
MegaLag's December 2024 exposé video$4B acquisition; ~8M users lost; two class actions
2026Astronomer
Astronomer's CEO kiss-cam scandal — HR head caught too, company never recovered
CEO and HR head caught on kiss-camsenior talent exodus, recruiting collapse
2025Pal Corporation (株式会社パル)
A Japanese fashion retailer's site let 194,000 stolen logins through in one night
credential-stuffing attack overnight194,307 accounts breached, exposure scope unknown
2025Zimmer Biomet
Zimmer Biomet's botched SAP rollout ended in a $172 million claim against Deloitte
a botched SAP S/4HANA go-live$94 million paid to Deloitte, $172 million claimed
2025Jaguar Land Rover
A cyberattack froze Jaguar Land Rover's whole manufacturing estate for about five weeks
a cyberattack on its IT estatefive weeks offline and a quarter of UK car output
2025National Information Resources Service (NIRS)
South Korean data center ran 12-yr-old batteries 60cm from servers — 647 systems down
an aging battery being relocated647 systems down; 384 batteries destroyed; weeks of recovery
2025Telefónica
A Telefónica network update crashed its own network — and Spain's 112 with it
one botched network updatenationwide outage; 112 emergency line disrupted
2025Fortinet
Fortinet left its own data on an unguarded cloud drive — a hacker sold 440GB of it
one unguarded cloud file drivea security vendor's own cloud data breached; 440GB dumped
2025Barclays
Barclays' mainframe software problem failed half of online payments on payday
a software fault in the UK mainframe£5 million to £7.5 million in compensation
2025小鹅通
Xiaoe sold livestream rooms with no health-ad filter — ¥360,000 and a rectification order
food sold as medicine on-platform¥360,000 fine + rectification order