Database error leaves 150 million voter records exposed online

More than 150 million U.S. voter records were available publicly due to a misconfigured database, a data firm confirmed Wednesday — the second such accidental exposure of voter data in six months.

The records were compiled by the voter information brokerage L2, but were not leaked by L2. Chris Vickery, a security researcher at MacKeeper, said the data was being hosted on a Google cloud account. The data has since been taken down.

“When I called L2, I told them that someone was giving their data away for free,” said Vickery. “They were pretty quickly able to tell who the client was.”

Visible data included names, addresses, political preferences, and opinions on issues including same-sex marriage and gun control. In total, there were 326 gigabytes of sensitive data improperly being handled online.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/284519-database-error-leaves-150-million-voter-records-exposed-online

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5 replies	Author	Time	Post
Database error leaves 150 million voter records exposed online (Original post)	insta8er	Jun 2016	OP
"compiled by the voter information brokerage" - so these were records that were sold to a client.	PoliticAverse	Jun 2016	#1
Internet accessed Cloud Storage is one of the most insecure mediums-Indemnity Insurance is Required.	TheBlackAdder	Jun 2016	#2
And, my company is moving credit card info to the cloud!	scscholar	Jun 2016	#3
If it's an internal cloud, no problems. Once it leaves your data center, the NSA also snapshots it.	TheBlackAdder	Jun 2016	#5
If you've ever voted in an internet poll,	MineralMan	Jun 2016	#4

Response to insta8er (Original post)

Wed Jun 22, 2016, 06:43 PM

PoliticAverse (26,366 posts)

1. "compiled by the voter information brokerage" - so these were records that were sold to a client.

I wonder how much they paid for them.

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Response to insta8er (Original post)

Wed Jun 22, 2016, 07:14 PM

TheBlackAdder (27,415 posts)

2. Internet accessed Cloud Storage is one of the most insecure mediums-Indemnity Insurance is Required.

.

It's not about if your data gets stolen, but when and how often.

.

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Response to TheBlackAdder (Reply #2)

Wed Jun 22, 2016, 07:36 PM

scscholar (2,902 posts)

3. And, my company is moving credit card info to the cloud!

I'm very afraid.

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Response to scscholar (Reply #3)

Thu Jun 23, 2016, 02:04 AM

TheBlackAdder (27,415 posts)

5. If it's an internal cloud, no problems. Once it leaves your data center, the NSA also snapshots it.

.

Indemnity insurance, so when the records are compromised, there's some protection.

But, the damage done to good will and trust is incalculable.

.

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Response to insta8er (Original post)

Wed Jun 22, 2016, 07:59 PM

MineralMan (145,736 posts)

4. If you've ever voted in an internet poll,

signed an online petition, donated to a political cause or registered on some political website with your informatiin, your information is probably in there. In fact, we're probably all in there. So what?

They don't have info that enables identity theft or a thing like that, so who cares? You'll just get some more spam.

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