The largest reported data leakage as of January 2024 was the Cam4 data breach in March 2020, which exposed more than 10 billion data records. The second-largest data breach in history so far, the Yahoo data breach, occurred in 2013. The company initially reported about one billion exposed data records, but after an investigation, the company updated the number, revealing that three billion accounts were affected. The National Public Data Breach was announced in August 2024. The incident became public when personally identifiable information of individuals became available for sale on the dark web. Overall, the security professionals estimate the leakage of nearly three billion personal records. The next significant data leakage was the March 2018 security breach of India's national ID database, Aadhaar, with over 1.1 billion records exposed. This included biometric information such as identification numbers and fingerprint scans, which could be used to open bank accounts and receive financial aid, among other government services.

Cybercrime - the dark side of digitalization As the world continues its journey into the digital age, corporations and governments across the globe have been increasing their reliance on technology to collect, analyze and store personal data. This, in turn, has led to a rise in the number of cyber crimes, ranging from minor breaches to global-scale attacks impacting billions of users – such as in the case of Yahoo. Within the U.S. alone, 1802 cases of data compromise were reported in 2022. This was a marked increase from the 447 cases reported a decade prior. The high price of data protection As of 2022, the average cost of a single data breach across all industries worldwide stood at around 4.35 million U.S. dollars. This was found to be most costly in the healthcare sector, with each leak reported to have cost the affected party a hefty 10.1 million U.S. dollars. The financial segment followed closely behind. Here, each breach resulted in a loss of approximately 6 million U.S. dollars - 1.5 million more than the global average.

Replication Data and Code for "Incentives and Information in Methane Leak Detection and Repair" Abstract: Capturing leaked methane can be a win for both firms and the environment. However, leakage volume uncertainty can be a barrier inhibiting leak repair. We study an experiment at oil and gas production sites which randomized whether site operators were informed of methane leakage volumes. At sites with high baseline leakage, we estimate a negative but imprecise effect of information on endline emissions. But at sites with zero measured leakage, giving firms information about methane leakage increased emissions at endline. Our results suggest that giving firms news of low leakage disincentivizes maintenance effort, thereby increasing the likelihood of future leaks. Package includes data from Wang et al. (2024) RCT as well as IEA data on estimated methane emissions and methane abatement costs. Package also includes code for replication.

About The Nauru Files contain the largest set of documents published from inside Australia's immigration detention system. Leaked to The Guardian in 2016, they include nearly 2,000 incident reports from the Nauru detention centre, which were written by guards, caseworkers and teachers on the remote Pacific island. Summary Examples of events include assaults, injuries, abuse and other forms of violence reported at the detention centre between 2013 and 2015. As noted by The Guardian, as well as academic research, Australia has privatised its immigration detention centres and exported detention of asylum seekers offshore to places such as Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. This strategy is part of a wider "Pacific Solution" implemented by the Government of Australia since the early 2000s as a hardline deterrent to "stop the boats." Effectively, asylum seekers intercepted and detained on Nauru are removed from access to Australia's asylum system. Data Structure These data are composed of incident reports. An incident report is a short summary of an event in the Nauru detention centre written by staff there. Some of the details found in the files may be triggering; we therefore advise caution with reading and analysing these data. According to The Guardian, these reports form part of the Government of Australia's requirements to document what is happening within its detention system. Each report holds detailed information of the incident at the detention centre along with a "summary log". Working with The Guardian, we have organised these data into two forms: a PDF of each incident report, sorted by name at the time of leak, and a CSV/JSON of all incident reports (see "nauru_files.csv/json"), which structures key details into variables within its columns. Examples of variables include time, incident type, severity and description. Combined, these form a structured database linking each incident report to these variables. Data Source The Guardian has modified the original, leaked data to remove any personally-identifying information within them. To achieve this, a stringent approach of redaction has been implemented to remove names of asylum seekers and staff, personal identification numbers of asylum seekers, signatures of detention staff, nationalities within small population groups and residential tent numbers, among other things. There are also a large number of acronyms used in these data. For your convenience, we have provided an RTF document with a listing of these acronyms and their meanings. If you use these data, please cite the original source at The Guardian: The Guardian. (10 August 2016). The Nauru Files: The lives of asylum seekers in detention detailed in a unique database. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-the-lives-of-asylum-seekers-in-detention-detailed-in-a-unique-database-interactive. Should you have any comments, questions or requested edits or extensions to the Nauru files, please contact Haven at kira.williams@utoronto.ca. For more articles from The Guardian on these data, see: The Nauru files: cache of 2,000 leaked reports reveal scale of abuse of children in Australian offshore detention. A short history of Nauru, Australia’s dumping ground for refugees. ‘I want death’: Nauru files chronicle despair of asylum seeker children.