Cyber crime: biggest online data breaches 2007-2019
Number of compromised data records in selected data breaches as of May 2019 (in millions)
This statistic presents a selection of the biggest online data breaches worldwide as of May 2019, ranked by number of records stolen. In August 2016, a 2014 hack of online platform Yahoo was uncovered, affecting at least 500 million users accounts. In December 2016, the company revealed another hack dating back to 2013, which affected 1 billion user records. The impact of the second reported Yahoo hack was updated in October 2017, when the company revealed that 3 billion accounts had been affected, making it the largest data breach in history. In 2011, Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity music service were attacked by hacking collective Lulzsec. The PSN was offline for more than 43 days and 77 million data records were stolen.
Compromised data records in data breaches – additional information
With the increasing use of digital files and reliance on digital data by many corporations, data breaches have become fairly common in the last decade or so. For example, the number of data breaches in the U.S. increased from 157 million in 2005 to 781 million in 2015, while the number of exposed records jumped from around 67 million to 169 million during the same time frame. The largest data breach of all time, as of September 2016, was an allegedly state-sponsored hack of Yahoo, which dates to late 2014 but it was only uncovered in 2016. The company advised all its users to change their passwords and take further measures to secure their accounts.
Identity theft is the most common type of data breach incident in the world. In 2015, identity theft accounted for more than 50 percent of all global data breaches, and about 40 percent of all compromised records that year. The services sector had the highest number of identities exposed that year – nearly 260 million. This figure accounted for just over 60 percent of all identities were exposed through data breaches in 2015. The financial sector is also highly affected by cyber crimes. Financial access data theft is the second most common type of data breach, accounting for 22 percent of all data breaches. In 2015, this sector had a total of 120 million identities exposed. The costs of cyber crimes are rather high for the financial services sector. Global cyber crimes caused, on average, a 13.5 million U.S. dollars annual loss for the financial services industry, the highest average amongst all industries.
Number of compromised data records in selected data breaches as of May 2019 (in millions)
Loading statistic...
| Amount of records stolen in millions | |
|---|---|
| Yahoo (Aug '13, revealed Dec '16, updated Dec '17) | 3,000 |
| Facebook (Apr '18)*** | 2,200 |
| River City Media (Feb '17) | 1,370 |
| Aadhaar (Mar '18) | 1,100 |
| Aadhaar system of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) (Jan '18) | 1,000 |
| First American Financial Corporation (May '19) | 885 |
| Marriott's Starwood guest reservation database (Nov '18) | 500 |
| Yahoo (2014, revealved Aug '16)* | 500 |
| Friend Finder Network Inc (Oct '16) | 412 |
| Twitter (May '18) | 330 |
| Chinese resume leak (Dec '18) | 202 |
| US Voter database (Dec '15) | 198 |
| MySpace (May '16) | 164 |
| Dubsmash (Feb '19)**** | 162 |
| Adobe (Sep '13) | 152 |
| MyFitnessPal (Mar '18) | 150 |
| eBay (Mar '14) | 145 |
| Equifax (May-Jul '17, reported Sep '17) | 143 |
| Heartland (Jan '09) | 130 |
| LinkedIn (Jun '12, revealed May '16) | 117 |
| VK (Jun '16) | 100 |
| Quora (Dec '18) | 100 |
| T.J. Maxx (Mar '07) | 94 |
| AOL (Dec '14) | 92 |
| MyHeritage (2017, revealed Jun '18) | 92 |
| Facebook (Mar '18)** | 87 |
| Dailymotion (Oct '16) | 82.5 |
| Anthem (Feb'15) | 80 |
| Sony PSN (Apr '11) | 77 |
Source
More information
Statistics on "U.S. government and cyber crime"
Discover Statista
Need help with using Statista for your research?
Tutorials and first steps
Further Content: Statistics, Studies, and Topic Pages
Statistics
- Per capita cost of data breach in the UK 2015, by industry
- Per capita cost for root causes of data breach in the UK in 2015
- Lost business costs of data breach in the UK 2010-2015
- Notification costs of data breaches in the UK 2010-2015
- Detection and escalation costs of a data breach in the UK 2010-2015
- Root causes of data breach in the UK in 2015
- Records compromised during data breaches in Q2 2017
- Leading global data breach methods 2017
- Share of UK companies that use data encryption to prevent data loss 2010-2015
- Costs arising from data loss in the UK in 2015, by category
- Share of UK companies that implement manual control practices to prevent data loss
- Per capita cost of data breach in the United Kingdom (UK) 2010-2015
- Share of UK companies that implemented perimeter controls to prevent data loss
- Organisational cost of data breach in the UK 2010-2015
- Ex-poste response costs of data breach in the UK from 2010-2015
- Perceived risk of cyber breach & insider misuse 2015, by industry
- Identities exposed through data breaches 2012-2016
- Average total cost per data breach worldwide 2014-2018
- Changing consumer behavior as a result of data breaches in the UK 2014-2015
- Global data breach identity theft causes 2016
Statistics on "U.S. government and cyber crime"
Related topics
About Statista
