Republican Data-Mining Firm Exposed Personal Information for Virtually Every American Voter

'Most Americans would likely be disturbed that this kind of information was generated about them in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that it was accidentally made public by the very companies being paid by the Republican Party to make it.' (Photo: Thinkstock)

Republican Data-Mining Firm Exposed Personal Information for Virtually Every American Voter

Leak may have potentially violated the privacy of almost every single registered voter in the United States

The GOP's 2016 presidential upset wasn't surprising just because it put Donald Trump in the White House; it also proved the party had vastly improved its ability to exploit data, including precision ad targeting campaigns on Facebook. Now comes the fallout of all that information hoarding: A California-based security researcher says Republican-linked election databases were inadvertently exposed to the entire internet, sans password, potentially violating the privacy of almost every single registered voter in the United States.

The data trove was apparently made public by accident by one of the data-mining companies that compiled it. It includes a mix of private information and data gleaned from public voter rolls: "the voter's date of birth, home and mailing addresses, phone number, registered party, self-reported racial demographic, voter registration status" as well as computer "modeled" speculation about each person's race and religion, according to an analysis provided to The Intercept.

Read the full article, and possible updates, at The Intercept.

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