New Study Shows Over 16 Billion Accounts Have Been Breached Around the World

The breaching of accounts is a thorny issue for internet service providers because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up leading to security getting compromised. A study conducted by Surfshark recently shed some light on the number of accounts that have been breached so far. Based on the findings in this study, well over 16 billion accounts have been breached around the world since 2004.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that people often use the same email address for multiple services. This allows malicious actors to gain widespread access to numerous accounts after breaching just a single email address, which has certainly increased the numbers in this regard.

In terms of total account breaches, the US came out on top with an estimated 2.7 billion American accounts having been compromised so far. In spite of the fact that this is the case, the US did not see the highest number of accounts being breached per capita. That dubious honor belongs to Russia, where just under 2.3 billion accounts have been breached.

For the US, around 833 accounts were breached per 100 people. That means that the average internet user there has seen 8 breaches apiece so far, but in Russia things are nearly twice as bad. For every 100 Russians, there have been a whopping 1,573 breaches with all things having been considered and taken into account.

Over in China, the numbers show just 71 breaches per 100 individuals. However, China has still seen the third highest number of breached accounts, with a grand total of just over a billion. France came in fourth with 512 million breached accounts, or 785 per 100 people, followed by Germany with 476 million.

One area where China is actually performing spectacularly is in terms of decreasing the quantity of account breaches. The East Asian nation has managed to see a 97% decline in account breaches, although the country that performed best by this metric was South Sudan where a 99% decrease was seen quarter over quarter.

On the other end of the spectrum, Taiwan was the worst performer by a large margin. The East Asian nation saw account breaches increase by a massive 1,986% within the span of a single quarter, coming up to 3.8 million accounts.

Over in South Korea, a 1,138% uptick was seen. That means that just under 1.2 million accounts were compromised in a three month timeframe. South Africa also performed poorly, with a 954% increase bringing bringing its total to a little over 420,000.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World