Over 5 million Indian online accounts breached in 2023, reveals report

NT Correspondent

New Delhi: According to Surfshark's annual report released on Monday, 5.3 million Indian online accounts experienced data breaches in 2023.

Surfshark defines a data breach as the exposure of confidential and sensitive information to unauthorized third parties.

Each breached or leaked email address used for online registrations is counted as an individual user account.

These compromised accounts may have included additional details such as passwords, phone numbers, IP addresses, zip codes, and other data.

The report highlighted that approximately 10 Indian user accounts were compromised every minute in 2023, equating to four breaches per 1000 accounts.

This places India as the fifth country on the list of nations most affected by data breaches during the year.

One of India’s biggest data breaches originated from the Indian apparel manufacturer Kewal Kiran Clothing in January 2023, with details of 12,32,580 user accounts leaked.

The second largest data breach originated from the furniture and electronic appliance rental service RentoMojo in April, in which details of 11,63,135 user accounts were leaked.

In 2022, India had been ranked seventh on the global list with 12.3 million data breaches, with nine user accounts breached for every 1,000. Around 23 Indian user accounts were breached every minute in 2023.

“The breach rate in India is 56% lower in 2023 than it was in 2022, while the global trend shows an 18% decrease,” the report noted.

Globally, the report found 299.8 million user accounts were breached in 2023. The US comprised 32% of these with 96.7 million breaches, followed by Russia (78.4 million), France (10.5 million), Spain (7.8 million), India (5.3 million), Taiwan (4 million), Australia (3.5 million), Italy (3.4 million), the United Kingdom (3.3 million) and Brazil (3.3 million).