Question: How many records have been lost or exposed in data breaches in the past four years?

Answer: Far more than 246,091,423--and that's just within America. The answer is "far more than" is because many of the private and public entities don't know how many records were exposed. Worse than that, roughly half of all companies surveyed don't report their data breaches or notify their customers or constituents.

I get this information from the Chronology of Data Breaches, a product of the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. They get their information from Attrition.org which is hosted by the Open Security Foundation.

When you look at these databases it's especially interesting to note which of the breaches is governmental or private industry. Or, how many are from hospitals, universities or K-12 schools. Or, take a look at how many breaches a specific entity has reported over the last four years.

 And we wonder why identity theft is rampant.