A massive database of Mexican voter records was made publicly accessible on the internet, a US security researcher has discovered.
The names, addresses, dates of birth and voter ID numbers of 87 million Mexicans appeared to be listed in the cache.
It was discovered by Chris Vickery, who had been browsing unsecured databases, with a security tool called Shodan.
The voter data has since been taken offline.
“When I opened it up in my database, viewer I saw names, obvious addresses and identifying numbers. I started Googling the addresses to see where they were,” Mr Vickery, a security researcher for software firm MacKeeper, told the BBC.
Mr Vickery had made his discovery on 14 April, he said, and initially had trouble reaching an official to warn about the leak.
After mentioning the database during a talk at Harvard last week, a Mexican who happened to be in the audience helped to authenticate the data.
“He was able to authenticate his father’s entry in the database – he said, ‘Oh my God, that’s my address, that’s everything,'” said Mr Vickery.
A journalist, also present at the talk, helped Mr Vickery to inform the Mexican National Electoral Institute, which organises federal elections in the country.
The institute has since released a statement in Spanish about the data’s publication online.
“A copy of the electoral register has been found in a file storage site of the US company Amazon,” it reads.
“An internal investigation has been launched and the case has been reported to the special prosecutor for electoral crimes.”
Once the authorities had been notified, steps were taken to remove the information from Amazon’s cloud servers. This was done by 22 April.
