Pwned: How Often Are Americans' Online Accounts Breached?

Abstract

News about massive 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 \textit{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.