Biggest data leaks worldwide 2010-2017

This statistic compares the scale of November 2017 Paradise Papers data leak compared to other data leaks worldwide as of November 2017. The Paradise Papers leak comprised 1.4 terabytes of data, compared to only 260 gigabytes of data revealed by the ICIJ in the Offshore Leaks in 2013. The biggest data leak so far is the Panama Papers data leak, which amounted to 2.6 terabytes. The Panama papers included 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents contained personal financial information about wealthy individuals and public officials that had previously been kept private.

Biggest data leaks worldwide as of November 2017 (in GB)

Characteristic	Data leak volume
The Panama Papers (2016)	2,600
The Paradise Papers (2017)	1,400
Offshore Leaks (2013)	260
Luxemburg Leaks (2014)	4
Swiss Leaks / HSBC files (2015)	3.3
Cablegate / Wikileaks (2010)	1.7

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Release date

November 2017

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Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

November 2010 to November 2017

Supplementary notes

The ranked events and publications can be classed as leaktivism. Leaktivism is defined as the action of distributing confidential documents to the public in an attempt to directly impact the socio-economic and political spheres. It can be argued that the Panama Papers show that leaking information can be an impactful form of protest. Data leaks such as the Panama Papers or the Paradise Papers fall under a different category of data breaches than hacks affecting users of a service such as the Equifax Hack (2017) or the numerous Yahoo data breaches.

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