Surfshark reveals data breaches in Ireland increased by 5 times in Q1 2024

Ireland witnessed 255k leaked online user accounts in Q1 2024, a 5x increase compared to Q4 2023, according to the Global data breach monitoring tool by cybersecurity company Surfshark.  For comparison, the US had 90M breached users in the last quarter and the UK had 5.7M. Analysis shows Ireland as the 46th most breached country in the world, with 23 million leaked accounts since 2004.

Surfshark’s analysis of data breaches over the last 20 years shows that out of the 22.9M compromised internet accounts, 6.1M have unique email addresses, which means the average email was breached 4 times. Ireland has had a total of 67M personal records exposed since 2004.

On average, each email address is leaked with 3 additional personal records. Ireland has had a total of 67 million personal records exposed. For example, 18M passwords were leaked together with Irish accounts, putting 79% of breached users in danger of account takeover, which might lead to identity theft, extortion, or other cybercrimes.

Biggest public breaches from Q1 2024 in Ireland

In the last quarter, Pandabuy had the biggest instance of a publicly known data breach in Ireland, with almost 19k emails leaked. Other notable breaches of Irish accounts: Cutout.Pro (12k),  Mr. Green Gaming (47). Other data breaches are yet to be disclosed publicly.

Globally, the number of data breaches is rising

“Surfshark’s extensive monitoring of data breach trends over the past two decades reveals an alarming digital reality: data leaks persist as an ongoing global threat. Since 2004, a staggering 17 billion user accounts have been leaked worldwide, with 400 million occurrences recorded at the start of this year,” says Lina Survila, a spokesperson at Surfshark. “We urge everyone to remain vigilant, create strong passwords, refrain from reusing them, and exercise caution when sharing personal information online.”

Out of 17B leaked user accounts, 38% of them are unique email addresses. A total of 60.9B data points have been exposed (17.2B of them have been email addresses) since 2004. On average, each email address is leaked with 3 additional data points. American and Russian accounts are leaked the most often.

In descending order, the ten most breached coutries since 2004 were, The US (3.0B), Russia (2.4B), China (1.1B), France (521.6M), Germany (486.7M), Brazil (354.2M), The UK (321.9M), India (320.5M), Italy (266.8M) and Canada (213.8M).

The countries with the highest breach density since 2004 (number of leaked accounts per resident): Russia (16.8), The US (9.0), South Sudan (8.1), France (8.1), Czechia (6.1), Singapore (5.8), Germany (5.8), Canada (5.5), Australia (5.3), The UK (4.8) and Portugal (4.7).

When an email account is breached, the user is at risk of social engineering and identity theft. Scammers might send fake emails pretending to be from legitimate organizations, and those emails might contain links with computer viruses or requests to disclose even more personal information. If the email address was leaked with more personal information like name and address, scammers might even be able to impersonate the victim for various malicious purposes.

If you suspect your information has been breached, you should:

1. Change the passwords to your accounts immediately
2. Enable two-factor authentication where possible
3. Contact your bank if your credit card information was leaked
4. Scan your devices for malware
5. Keep an eye out for scams if your email, phone number, or other contact information leaked.

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