Over 2 million British accounts leaked in 2025 so far, study reports

When it comes to cybersecurity breaches, the UK ranks number 6 in the world, with 2.2 million user accounts compromised in the first quarter of 2025.

That’s according to Surfshark’s global data breach analysis.

While the number of breached accounts worldwide dropped significantly from 973.7 million to 68.3 million in Q1 2025, the UK remains a major target for cyberattacks.

The countries most affected by breaches in Q1 2025 were the United States, Russia, India, Germany, and Spain.

“In Q1 2025, the number of leaked accounts dropped dramatically, following the alarming surge in breaches seen in 2024, particularly in Q3 and Q4. Unlike the previous year, which saw compromised data reach record levels, Q1 2025 experienced a sharp decrease in exposed accounts,” says Luís Costa, Research Lead at Surfshark.

Despite a 49% decrease in data breaches in the UK compared to the previous quarter, the figures remain high. Approximately 17 British user accounts were breached every minute in 2025.

Surfshark’s analysis of data breaches since 2004 reveals that the UK leads Northern Europe with 368.1 million compromised user accounts. A total of 79.2 million unique emails and 238.4 million passwords have been leaked in the UK, putting a significant number of users at risk of account takeovers, identity theft, extortion, and other cybercrimes. On average, a British individual has been affected by data breaches around five times.

Since 2004, the UK has had 1.2 billion personal records exposed, with each email being breached with 3.1 additional data points.

In Q1 2025, the ten most breached countries were the US (16.9M), Russia (4.4M), India (4.2M), Germany (3.9M), Spain (2.4M), the UK (2.2M), France (2.1M), Canada (0.89M), Argentina (0.79M), and South Sudan (0.73M).

The countries with the highest breach density (leaked accounts per 1,000 residents) were South Sudan, Spain, the US, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, the UK, France, Russia, and Norway.

https://surfshark.com/research/data-breach-monitoring/quarterly-analysis