Between phishing attacks and data base breaches, your personal data is exposed to a constant barrage of unauthorized access. But American internet users have it particularly bad.
According to Surfshark, the US ranked first (or last?) in the world, with a total of 214.4 million data base breaches in 2021 alone. That's a 22% increase in affected accounts from 174.4 million in 2020 amid the outbreak of the COVID-19 outbreak. That's over 50 million more accounts over the next highest country, Iran.
The other countries in the top five for the most affected accounts are Iran (156.09 million), India (86.63M), Russia (26.98M), and France (24.63M). Altogether, those five countries add up to 506.6 million accounts affected, with the rest of the world accounting for only 446.1 million data breaches.
On a global scale, 952.8 million accounts were hit in the first 11 months of 2021, which means that one out of five people were affected worldwide. That's a 3.4% growth and 31 million more compromised users than the previous year. If this trend were to continue, it's estimated that it will take just about five years to expose the data of the entire internet-using population.
If you end up on the wrong side of a data breach, don't do nothing, like so many others have (not) done before. There are actions you can take to quickly re-secure your online accounts before anyone has a chance to access your information. And if you get hacked anyway, we can help you deal with that, too.