Surfshark reveals Ireland had 370k leaked accounts in 2026 so far, pushing its total to a staggering 29M

The latest data from cybersecurity company Surfshark ranks Ireland as the 41st most breached country in 2026, with 369.7k leaked accounts. Globally, a total of 313.4 million accounts were breached, with the US ranking first and amounting to 29% of all breaches from January through June. France takes second place, while Brazil is third, followed by India and the UK.

Surfshark’s data also highlights a notable regional shift: Europe surpassed North America in the number of breached accounts during the previous quarter. In Q2 2026, 1 in 3 breached accounts worldwide came from Europe, and 58% of those within the region were linked to France. In addition, 4 out of 5 countries with the highest breach density (number of leaked accounts per 1,000 residents) are also European: 1st is France, then Poland, the US, Portugal, and Lithuania.

“Information taken in breaches years ago can remain in circulation for a long time, resurfacing in new fraud schemes, and used to target people long after the original incident. The same is true for data being stolen today: even if it is not abused immediately, it can still come back years later in the form of account takeovers, identity abuse, scams, and financial theft,” says Tomas Stamulis, Chief Security Officer at Surfshark.

Since 2004, Ireland is the 4th in Northern Europe, with 29M compromised user accounts. A total of 6.9M unique emails were breached from Ireland. 18.8M passwords were leaked together with Irish accounts, putting 65% of breached users in danger of account take over that might lead to identity theft, extortion or other cybercrimes. Statistically, an average Irish has been affected by data breaches around 5 times.

The latest update for Surfshark’s global data breach statistics can be found here: https://surfshark.com/research/data-breach-monitoring?country=ie

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