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Massive trove of US voter data discovered on Web


Strictly Street

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http://www.cnet.com/news/massive-trove-of-voters-election-data-discovered-on-web/

 

 

A misconfigured database has exposed the personal information on more than 191 million US voter records, according to Chris Vickery, a security researcher who made the discovery and shared his findings with Databreaches.net for a story published Monday. The database contains information required for voter registration -- including names, home addresses, date of birth and home phone numbers -- as well as voting history since 2000.

By comparison, the US Census Bureau found that 142.2 million US citizens were registered to vote in 2014 (PDF).

 

Quite a database! Wonder who the ~50 million other voters were/are?

 

All Hail our lizard overlords!

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That info is and has been public info for some time. Anyone can Google it.

 

 

State by state sure. Inevitable that a federal database would be made.

 

The numbers are interesting,

 

Looks like 1/4 of the voters are swing voters, no party registration.

Some number like 1/2 of the people actually vote.

 

Who owns the database is still in question. It does take some cash to run the hardware so I'm guessing we'll know who soon enough.

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More surprises today.

 

 

Personal data and non-public information on almost 60 percent of US citizens was available online because of a misconfigured database.

 

The database reportedly contains voters' names and addresses, voter identification numbers, phone numbers, dates of birth, and political affiliations. Included in the data is a itemized voting history since 2000.

 

Although in most states, access to voter registration data is available as a matter of public record, much of the data is highly restricted and can be used for limited purposes.

In one example, South Dakota requires those requesting voter data to confirm it will not be used or sold for commercial purposes, according to The Hill.

 

 

So it would seem that it is an enhanced database of voter records plus additional info. Private big data companies come to mind instantly.

 

 

It's believed that the data was initially bought by an third-party firm, which gives others' -- such as political campaigns -- access to large portions of voter data at a lower cost. Vickery said that the database originated from Nation Builder, a software company with backing from venture capitalist Ben Horowitz and Napster co-founder Sean Parker.

Nation Builder did not immediately return an email for comment at the time, but told The Hill that the company "cannot control what happens" to voter data once customers buy it.

 

http://nationbuilder.com/

Nation Builder: Used and trusted by over 7,000 customers in 98 countries

Looks to be a massive organization of social activism.

 

Perhaps their hiring a few good database people?

 

 

 

Edited by Strictly Street
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  • 5 months later...

154 million voter records exposed, revealing gun ownership, Facebook profiles, and more

 

Screen_Shot_2016-06-22_at_2.59.59_PM.png

 

Gun_Owner?!?

Pay no attention citizen, move along.

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/154-million-voter-files-exposed-l2/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

Big data is kinda creepy, eh?

 

 

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21 hours ago, Tonik said:

That stuff has always been public record and easy to get. Put your tin foil hats away, for now.

Wonder where they are getting the data from?

Nice that it is all in one place and of course its legal to have a private database.

Have to wonder what is in some databases, Google for example. Nothing is private would seem to be the case in the internet age.

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3 hours ago, Strictly Street said:

Wonder where they are getting the data from?

Political consultants and campaigns gather it up and get hacked. Saw a few news stories to that effect awhile ago.

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Wonder where they are getting the data from?

Nice that it is all in one place and of course its legal to have a private database.

Have to wonder what is in some databases, Google for example. Nothing is private would seem to be the case in the internet age.

Imagine the incredible treasure trove Google has at their disposal. They're constantly hiring Data Scientists too. I bet some of their people know more about behavioral cause and effect probability than anyone has in the history of humanity.

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On 6/26/2016 at 1:34 AM, smccrory said:

Imagine the incredible treasure trove Google has at their disposal. They're constantly hiring Data Scientists too. I bet some of their people know more about behavioral cause and effect probability than anyone has in the history of humanity.

The gun entry interests me, wonder where that one came from. Most people wouldn't say one way or the other.

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The gun entry interests me, wonder where that one came from. Most people wouldn't say one way or the other.

For sure. One could certainly derive probable gun owners from purchase transaction history, social media postings and memberships, search history and friend social graphs. Correlate them and I'd say you could get a 90% confidence of who to interrogate :-(

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