Voter Registration Data Breach: Personal Data of 198 Million U.S. Voters Leaked
A huge database containing personal data of 198 million U.S. voters was found online in an unsecured server, easily becoming the largest voter data leak to date.
The records were discovered by Upguard cyber risk analyst Chris Vickery on an Amazon S3 storage server owned by Deep Root Analytics, a Republican data analytics firm that helped President Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.
Deep Root Analytics has confirmed ownership of the server and has taken full responsibility of the leak. Vickery has informed federal authorities after the discovery and the server has since been secured.
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The database included a wealth of information attached to 61 percent of the U.S. population including their names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers and voter registration details such as the political party they are registered with.
Also included was information described as "modeled" voter ethnicities and religions as well as advanced sentiment analyses used to predict where the voters stand concerning hot issues. All of this data make up more than a terabyte.
Some of the records were provided by two other Republican data firms, namely TargetPoint and Data Trust, whose service helped in shaping Trump's campaign.
The files provided by Data Trust included spreadsheets containing a unique GOP identifier for each voter for the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. There was also a folder that held 2016 data only included files for Ohio and Florida, which happen to be two key battleground states.
The information from TargetPoint included entries that rate voters based on how likely — the scale went from "very unlikely" to "very likely" — they will support a certain candidate or policy.
There was also data pulled from the banned subreddit r/fatpeoplehate and American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove.
In a statement by Deep Root co-founder Alex Lundry, he assured the public that despite the unimaginable degree of the leak, there is nothing to worry about:
"The data that was accessed was, to the best of our knowledge proprietary information as well as voter data that is publicly available and readily provided by state government offices. Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access."
