According to the latest report from Surfshark, which has been recording them since 2004, the number of hacked email addresses skyrocketed in early 2024. Among the most affected countries, France is unfortunately in a very good position.
THE cyberattacks are constantly increasing. An observation that is verified in the run-up to certain major events such as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, but also on a daily basis with increasingly numerous hacking attempts. There are countless data leaks, sometimes reaching tens of billions of pieces of stolen information, and this is clearly not about to stop. Surfshark, a company offering cybersecurity tools such as a VPN or antivirus, reveals alarming figures.
Since 2004, the firm records all the times an email address is hacked. Thanks to this database, the developments are easy to calculate and the last one is chilling. In the last quarter of 2023, 81 million accounts were compromised. In the first quarter of 2024, we are at 435 millioneither 5 times more than a few months ago barely. This amounts to saying thatwe went from 627 to 3,353 email addresses hacked every minute around the world. Unfortunately, France is not the best student in this area.
France is one of the countries most affected by email address hacking, a phenomenon on the rise
Since 2004, Surfshark has spotted 521,554,761 email addresses compromised in France. This places the country in 4th position in the rankingbehind the China which still has approximately twice as many. Second on the podium, Russia with over 24 billion. Those are the UNITED STATES who lead the dance, they surpass the 30 billion. It is important to specify that a single address can be counted several times.
If we are only interested in unique addresses, we fall back to 6.5 billion in 20 years. Don’t forget that it is possible to check if you have been the victim of a data leak using various web tools such as the site Have I Been Pwned. If you have any doubt, use it. Let’s also remember that using the same email to register for different online services is not dangerous in itself, provided that all associated passwords are different.