Surfshark isn’t just a VPN that offers huge promotions on a fairly regular basis. It is also a research center on online safety, digital quality of life, and censorship.
I will focus today on one of their latest research projects, namely the one dedicated to data breaches according to the country. I don’t know about you, but personally, I like to know this kind of thing, to see the differences that can exist between a country and its neighbor, or to break down preconceived ideas that we may have about one country or another. Especially when I get an interactive tool in front of me with graphs and a bit of color 😉
Surfshark has gone all the way back to 2004 for its analyses, which helps to see the evolution over almost two decades. Any idea of the number of breaches identified (name, nickname, password, etc.)? Millions? No. Tens of millions? No. No less than 16.5 billion! Including 3.3 billion since 2020 alone. And yes, data leaks are more common than the number of breaths you’d take in… 25 whole lives. That’s crazy! And we must also add those for which we have not been able to locate the country of origin of the hacked/leaked accounts & co (estimated at 30% of the total). After all, it doesn’t mean it’s dangerous every time. If only your email address is retrieved, it’s not a big deal; if the password is with it, it’s something else.
Data Leaks in Europe ( ex France)
First reflex, go and see how things are going for our dear French homeland… 514 million breaches and the 4th most affected country (despite a clear decrease over the last two years), behind the USA, Russia, and China. Oops. The sites that leaked the most data from the French? Wattpad, Wakanim, and Gravatar. Come on, just for your general knowledge (which you will be exhibiting during Christmas dinners), you should know that Greenland has suffered almost 155,000 leaks. Now you know where the melting of the ice comes from (leaks, etc.).
But it’s mostly the general stats that are chilling. On average, a unique email address leaks three times, and 75% of emails worldwide are affected. Every minute, several hundred accounts are affected (between 200 and 1000 depending on the period). And Europe is three times more likely than any other part of the world to be targeted (well, then they put Russia in the mix, so it’s less in real life). Faced with these figures, you have already understood that securing your online activity is ultra-important. And that includes a good VPN, which Surfshark is in terms of value for money. So far, it has never been caught at fault and has not suffered any data loss unlike many others.
Not only have they been using 100% RAM servers for several years, but they offer all encryption standards (AES-256 and IKEv2/IPsec with OpenVPN or WireGuard option) and protect against DNS leakage. As well as camouflage mode for your ISP, split tunneling, dynamic MultiHop, GPS-Spoofing for Android, automatic IP switching, kill switch and so on.
Without forgetting the fun side of a VPN which is to access VOD catalogs from all countries to censored websites in your country of residence (or vacation), all in a fairly fast way (3200+ servers in 100+ countries) and on almost all OS (Windows/Linux/macOS) and platforms (desktop/mobile/tablet/game console/browsers…). But above all, it covers the whole family’s back, regardless of the number of devices to be connected since it simply offers unlimited and simultaneous access!
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