Pwned: How Often Are Americans' Online Accounts Breached?

07/30/2018

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by   Ken Cor, et al.

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News about large online breaches is increasingly common. But there has been little good data on how exposed people are because of these breaches. We combine data from a large, representative sample of adult Americans (n = 5,000) with data from Have I Been Pwned to estimate the lower bound of the average number of breached online accounts per person. We find that at least 82.84% of Americans have had their accounts breached. And that on average Americans' accounts have been breached at least three times. Better educated, the middle-aged, women, and Whites are more likely to have had their accounts breached than the complementary groups.