Nearly 80% of French people have data for sale on the darknet due to hacks

Nearly 80% of French people have data for sale on the darknet due to hacking, a senior gendarmerie official said this Thursday, October 8, during a conference.

“Approximately 80% of French people have their data for sale on the darknet at more or less significant levels,” declared General André Petillot, major general of the gendarmerie, on the occasion of the Mediterranean Strategic Meetings organized in Toulon by the FMES foundation. “There are people for whom there is everything, address, telephone, email address, health data, etc.,” he added, referring to the many malicious uses that their resale can generate: “false loan files, scams of all kinds.”

France is one of the countries most targeted by cyberattacks, according to professionals in the sector. A study by the cybersecurity company Surfshark published in July places France at the top of the European countries most affected by data breaches, with 43.4 million accounts compromised in the first half of 2026 - up more than 62% compared to the second half of 2025. "France comes second among the countries which suffer the most information leaks, behind the United States," Karim Hamia, cybersecurity expert at Check Point Software Technologies, explained in August.

Several high-profile cases of data theft in the hands of public organizations have shaken France in recent months, such as the massive hacking of the French tax authorities this summer. The hacking of data from other institutions has also had significant consequences, such as that targeting the French Shooting Federation, which would have allowed criminals to locate and then burglarize shooters' homes to steal their weapons. “We are in a world of permanent acceleration, we are not completely aware of the speed of things, and a certain number of public infrastructures are not up to this level of protection” required, estimated the general director of Orange Cyberdéfense, Hugues Foulon, during a conference alongside General Petillot.