Data showed that since 2004, a total of 124 million accounts have been breached in the Philippines, a report from cybersecurity firm Surfshark said.
The company recently released its Global Data Breach statistics which provide insights about the overall state of data breaches in the Philippines.
The release is timely, following the recent news on 13 million PhilHealth members were affected by a data breach.
The 124 million accounts breached in the Philippines is second only to Indonesia, which had 144 million accounts breached.
The company said out of the 124 million compromised Internet accounts, 50 million have unique email addresses, which means an average user email in the Philippines has been breached almost three times.
The Philippines has had a total of 420 million data points have been exposed since 2004. On average, each email address is leaked with three additional data points.
The report further said 70 million passwords were leaked together with Filipino accounts, putting more than half of the breached users in danger of account takeover that might lead to identity theft, extortion, or other cybercrimes.
The Philippines ranks 5th in Asia and 17th globally based on the breach count since 2004, the company also said.
Since 2004, a total of 17 billion accounts have been breached worldwide, and approximately a third of them have unique email addresses.
“In Asia, 52 accounts are breached per 100 people on average,” Agneska Sablovskaja, lead researcher at Surfshark, said. “However, in the Philippines, this number goes up to 106 per 100 people. Statistically speaking, an average Filipino has been affected by data breaches around once.“
