Over 750,000 applications for US birth certificate copies exposed online
A third-party government supplier has exposed hundreds of thousands of applications containing birth-certificate data.
The trove of information is owned by a company that provides an online platform to state governments – including California, New York and Texas – that allows residents to request copies of vital records. Fidus Information Security found the database hosted in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage bucket that was left open to the internet.
The bucket contained more than 752,000 applications, with names, addresses, email, phone numbers, family member info, dates of birth and the reason for making the application. According to TechCrunch, which verified the data, the bucket is still open – and updates daily. In one week, it added 9,000 applications to the database. The owner didn’t respond to multiple contact efforts; Amazon said that it would notify the owner, but no action has been taken, according to Fidus. For that reason, the company has not been named.
