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A staggering 1.8 million Australian user accounts have been leaked in data breaches in the first three months of 2024.
Data breaches appear to be a regular event these days, but new research suggests the rate of Australian user accounts compromised in these breaches has recently skyrocketed.
According to research from VPN outfit Surfshark, 1.8 million Australian account details have been leaked in just the first three months of 2024 – a 388 per cent increase over the previous quarter.
To put the figures in context, Australia had nine times more breaches than neighbouring New Zealand, which experienced 197,000 account compromises, but three times less than the United Kingdom, which saw 5.7 million accounts breached in the same period.
And the wider global picture isn’t much better.
“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,” said Surfshark spokesperson Lina Survila in a statement.
“Since 2004, a staggering 17 billion user accounts have been leaked worldwide, with 400 million occurrences recorded at the start of this year.”
Australia is the 15th most breached nation in the world over the last 20 years, and in that time, 416 million sets of Australian personal records have been exposed in data breaches. Each leaked email was associated with three other data points on average, and the number of compromised passwords in that period was 97 million.
Looking at the data another way, the numbers add up to 13 Australian accounts being leaked every minute since 2004.
“We urge everyone to remain vigilant, create strong passwords, refrain from reusing them, and exercise caution when sharing personal information online,” Survila said.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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