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India Stands Third In Data Breaches! Over 86 Million People Affected Till 2021
Writer: Ratika Rana
Her primary objective is to inform, promote, educate and cultivate readers through writing.
India, 17 Dec 2021 9:37 AM GMT
Editor : Ankita Singh |
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Creatives : Ratika Rana
Her primary objective is to inform, promote, educate and cultivate readers through writing.
The country stands right behind the US and Iran in the total number of data breaches. The cases have increased fourfold in 2021, as compared to the previous year.
In the 21st century, data is an essential commodity, and data breach is one of the most common crimes. A Netherlands-based Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider named Surfshark has released a report that places India on the third spot for data breaches from January to November in 2021. The VPN provider used its data breach provider to assess the countries. The top 5 countries in the list include the United States of America (USA), Iran, India, Russia and France. In total, India faced nearly 86.6 million data breaches, an increase of 356 per cent from the 19 million cases in 2020.
How Does Data Breach Affect Users?
The concerning fact is that companies might not use adequate mechanisms to safeguard their customers' data. As a result, the details of credit cards, debit cards, personal information like phone numbers and date of births, among many others, are leaked to hackers. Hackers could use this personal information to blackmail the users or trick them into accessing malware. Additionally, The Print reported that a hacker could sell your data in bulk to companies, who might use it to target the user via mails, unsolicited SMS, or spam calls.
Hardest Hit: USA And Middle-East
Surfshark data shows that the USA stood first with 212.4 million data breaches, which rose from more than 174 million cases in 2020. Data breaches in the top countries comprised more than half of the total data breaches. Iran jumped from 1.4 million data breaches in 2020 to 156.1 million, also taking the highest leap of 10,842 per cent. Moreover, the report also mentions that the Middle East showed the maximum increase in data breaches from 2020 to 2021. Over 9 million user accounts suffered data breaches h in Sudan compared to 2,14,000 cases in 2020.
Surfshark mentioned that if we go by the statistics, more than 1 billion accounts have been victims of a data breach in the two years of 2020 and 2021. The horrific figure means that 1 in 5 people in the world has been exposed to a data breach.
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