These 2 countries lead the world in account breach

More than 14 billion accounts and 5 billion unique email addresses have been hacked worldwide since 2004, according to data collected(Opens in a new window) by VPN provider Surfshark. Can you be counted among them? Chances are yes, and it may have happened to you more than once.

Surfshark found that since people tend to use the same login credentials for multiple accounts, a single email address was hacked three times, on average. The data also indicates that for every 100 people, 66 unique email addresses and 191 accounts are hacked.

The United States and Russia lead the way in all of this, and together account for 30% of the total number of breaches worldwide. The two countries have more than 2 billion breaches in total, with America accounting for 15.4% of all messaging breaches and Russia 14.5%.

While the United States has an alarming number of 694 hacked accounts per 100 people, Russia actually has 1,489, giving the country the highest number of hacks per 100 people. This also means that statistically every Russian email account has been hacked around 15 times.

The number of violations in these two countries leaves a big gap between them and other countries. China has the third highest number of violations with just 986 million and only 69 violations per 100 people. Next come Germany and France, which do not even reach 500 million offences.

Surfshark warns that since more than 30% of hacked accounts did not contain information about a person’s country of residence, the actual number of hacks is likely much higher than this study shows. So if you’re worried about the security of your online accounts, check out our tips for boosting your online security.