According to a recent study released by Surfshark, France continues to struggle with data breaches, with only the United States experiencing worse figures in the first quarter of 2026.
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Surfshark, a company known for its antivirus and VPN services, has just issued its quarterly report on data breaches. This report includes overall statistics and detailed data specific to different countries. In 2025, France was the second most targeted country after the United States. The situation appears to have persisted into 2026, as detailed below. Before diving into the numbers, it’s important to note that a single email address can be linked to multiple accounts, which might inflate the total breach figures; additionally, 25.9% of the compromised accounts had no location data, suggesting that the country-specific data may actually be underreported.
Global Account Breaches Exceed 20 Billion Since 2004
Surfshark estimates that around 23.7 billion accounts have been hacked globally since 2004. Of these, approximately 7.9 billion are unique email addresses, with each address breached about three times on average. This translates to about 95 unique email addresses and 287 breached accounts per 100 people worldwide. The largest and most technologically connected countries bear the brunt of these violations. Here are the top five most affected territories since 2004:
- United States: 4.7 billion compromised accounts
- Russia: 3.3 billion compromised accounts
- China: nearly 2 billion compromised accounts
- France: 740 million compromised accounts
- Germany: 644 million compromised accounts
Is France on a Downward Spiral?
Since 2004, France has been the fourth most affected country by data breaches. The situation seems to be worsening. Since January 1, 2026, there have been 23.5 million data leaks in France, more than double the number from the previous quarter. This marks the second worst quarter for the country since 2004, surpassed only by the third quarter of 2024, which saw a massive leak of over 3 billion email addresses on an underground criminal forum, including nearly 127 million French accounts.
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In the first quarter of 2026, the United States is the only country with more targeted data breaches, reporting over 60.3 million data leaks. Here are the top ten countries most affected by data breaches in the first quarter of 2026:
- United States: 60.3 million compromised accounts
- France: 23.5 million compromised accounts
- India: 7.3 million compromised accounts
- Brazil: 4.5 million compromised accounts
- United Kingdom: 4.4 million compromised accounts
- Argentina: 4 million compromised accounts
- China: 3.7 million compromised accounts
- Netherlands: 3.3 million compromised accounts
- Canada: 3.2 million compromised accounts
- Spain: 2.8 million compromised accounts
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Jordan Park writes in-depth reviews and editorial opinion pieces for Touch Reviews. With a background in UI/UX design, Jordan offers a unique perspective on device usability and user experience across smartphones, tablets, and mobile software.