Global data breaches rise 13%, while UK leaks double and Ukraine rises in the rankings
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- Surfshark recorded 121.8 million compromised accounts worldwide in the third quarter of 2026, up 13.2% from the previous quarter.
- The United Kingdom overtook France as the most affected country in Europe, while Ukraine jumped from 47th to 6th place globally.
- The United States still accounts for nearly a third of all leaks, and experts say limiting sharing is your best defense.
According to new research from Surfshark, more than 121.8 million online accounts were compromised worldwide between July and September 2026. This is a 13.2% increase from the previous quarter.
The United Kingdom experienced the most dramatic change. Its number of leaked accounts more than doubled to 5.8 million, a 121.6% increase that took it beyond France to become the most leaked country in Europe.
Ukraine also rose in the rankings, moving from 47th to 6th in the world after 2.6 million accounts were breached in just three months.
Most breaches occur on a company’s servers and not your own device, so even the best VPN can’t prevent your data from being leaked. However, there are still steps you can take to limit the damage.
Europe is under increasing pressure
The rise of the United Kingdom occurred during a quarter very busy with attacks on British organizations. In late July, extortion group ExfilSquad claimed it had stolen contact details of more than 100,000 police officers and staff from the National Police Legal Database.
The same group also claimed to have leaked around 600,000 Department of Education records.
Ukraine’s rise fits a broader pattern. Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report 2026 ranked the country first in Europe and third globally in cyber attacks in the first half of the year.
Ukraine’s CERT-UA also handled around 200 incidents targeting citizens between January and September, up from 80 the previous year, many of them related to phishing for Telegram and Signal logins.
“We can see that attacks vary between countries, as attackers look for the juiciest targets, sometimes for financial purposes and sometimes for political purposes,” said Tomas Stamulis, director of security at Surfshark.
It’s not just about raw numbers, either. Estonia had the highest breach density in the world with 118 compromised accounts per 1,000 people, ahead of Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The United States continues to lead the way
Globally, the United States remained the country with the most leaks, with 38.1 million leaked accounts, or 31% of the total. Brazil (7 million), the United Kingdom (5.8 million), India (5.5 million) and Australia (3.1 million) rounded out the top five.
Meanwhile, France cooled sharply. It recorded 2.4 million compromised accounts, compared to 19.7 million in the second quarter, and fell out of the top three for the first time this year.
How to stay safe
Stamulis warns that stolen data can remain hidden for long periods before criminals decide to use it.
Their advice is to treat personal information as confidential by default, share your real data only when really necessary, such as on official forms, and use an alias, secondary email address, or email masking service for everything else.
A password manager also helps ensure that a leaked login doesn’t unlock your other accounts. Meanwhile, identity theft protection and data deletion services can alert you to exposure and reduce the amount of information that is available.
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