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Thread: Personal details of nearly 200 million US citizens exposed

  1. #1
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    Default Personal details of nearly 200 million US citizens exposed

    Personal details of nearly 200 million US citizens exposed


    • 19 June 2017


    Sensitive personal details relating to almost 200 million US citizens have been accidentally exposed by a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee.

    The 1.1 terabytes of data includes birthdates, home addresses, telephone numbers and political views of nearly 62% of the entire US population.

    The data was available on a publicly accessible Amazon cloud server.

    Anyone could access the data as long as they had a link to it.

    Political biases exposed

    The huge cache of data was discovered last week by Chris Vickery, a cyber-risk analyst with security firm UpGuard. The information seems to have been collected from a wide range of sources - from posts on controversial banned threads on the social network Reddit, to committees that raised funds for the Republican Party.

    The information was stored in spreadsheets uploaded to a server owned by Deep Root Analytics. It had last been updated in January when President Donald Trump was inaugurated and had been online for an unknown period of time.

    "We take full responsibility for this situation. Based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked," Deep Root Analytics' founder Alex Lundry told technology website Gizmodo.

    "Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access."

    Apart from personal details, the data also contained citizens' suspected religious affiliations, ethnicities and political biases, such as where they stood on controversial topics like gun control, the right to abortion and stem cell research.

    The file names and directories indicated that the data was meant to be used by influential Republican political organisations. The idea was to try to create a profile on as many voters as possible using all available data, so some of the fields in the spreadsheets were left left empty if an answer could not be found.

    "That such an enormous national database could be created and hosted online, missing even the simplest of protections against the data being publicly accessible, is troubling," Dan O'Sullivan wrote in a blog post on Upguard's website.

    "The ability to collect such information and store it insecurely further calls into question the responsibilities owed by private corporations and political campaigns to those citizens targeted by increasingly high-powered data analytics operations."

    Privacy concerns

    Although it is known that political parties routinely gather data on voters, this is the largest breach of electoral data in the US to date and privacy experts are concerned about the sheer scale of the data gathered.

    "This is deeply troubling. This is not just sensitive, it's intimate information, predictions about people's behaviour, opinions and beliefs that people have never decided to disclose to anyone," Privacy International's policy officer Frederike Kaltheuner told the BBC News website.

    However, the issue of data collection and using computer models to predict voter behaviour is not just limited to marketing firms - Privacy International says that the entire online advertising ecosystem operates in the same way.

    "It is a threat to the way democracy works. The GOP [Republican Party] relied on publicly-collected, commercially-provided information. Nobody would have realised that the data they entrusted to one organisation would end up in a database used to target them politically.

    "You should be in charge of what is happening to your data, who can use it and for what purposes," Ms Kaltheuner added.

    There are fears that leaked data can easily be used for nefarious purposes, from identity fraud to harassment of people under protection orders, or to intimidate people who hold an opposing political view.

    "The potential for this type of data being made available publicly and on the dark web is extremely high," Paul Fletcher, a cyber-security evangelist at security firm Alert Logic told the BBC.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology
    ”The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher

  2. #2
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    As an issue of fairness, I demand that the Democrats release all their similar files of their supporters
    Prov. 3
    5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
    6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

    When the sun goes nova, better have your Psalm 91 arrangements made.

  3. #3
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    boiling a frog
    at this point news like this is almost normal,when it really is extraordinarily bad

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by jed turtle View Post
    As an issue of fairness, I demand that the Democrats release all their similar files of their supporters
    Based on the headline, I think EVERYONE'S information was collected. Why anyone would use their real name on the internet is beyond me though.
    Ku`ia ka hele a ka na`au ha`aha`a

  5. #5
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    I've got acquaintances bugging me all the time to get on Facebook, Snapchat, google this, google that. Download this, etc.
    They think I'm too paranoid!
    Ill briefly turn on my phone data to look at a map, get a phone #, then off it goes, back to being a standard cell phone.

  6. #6
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    Thats funny I just got off FB from contacting a old friend I knew some 30 years ago.. Great fun going over lost memories and bring back some good ones again. This is a good thing this FB and the internet. I use Google all the time. Use Amazon a lot, and have tons of neat pictures on not only FB but Photobucket as well. LOL. It is comical to see all sorts of pictures from years past. I have not one thing to be ashamed off or hide. So what if the government has a whole file cabinet on me as I have used a debit card now for the last 35 YEARS hardly ever pay cash. I like this new electric age we are in. Smart TV's WiFi throughout the house. Connected devices like iPads and such as that. My iMac might be 9 years old now but still plenty fast. Yuppers no need for me to look around ever tree and bush for those boogey men in black suits, or those pesky black helicopters. LOL. And I sleep pretty darn good at night knowing I don't have to look around every corner for the MIB. Now i have taken precautions about wording things on line with my debit card. 2 Minutes after I order something BINGO I get a notice from my bank was it YOU that just made this purchased and used this card? Yes one does have to be careful while on line, but not be PARANOID about it, or lose sleep over it. LOL.

  7. #7
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    ......Hoppalong the contrarian.....

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