The VPN firm Mentor revealed one of the worst news regarding privacy in Ecuador. He found a massive leak of data from more than 20 million people on an unsecured server located in Miami, Florida, of which 6.7 million correspond to minors. A team led by researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar discovered the breach that may include data in addition to deceased people. According to his report, “data breach involves a large amount of sensitive personally identifiable information at the individual level. Most of the affected people seem to be located in Ecuador. ”
VPN Mentor is the largest VPN (virtual private network) review website in the world. Its research laboratory is a service that strives to help the online community defend itself against cyber threats, while educating organizations on how to protect their users’ data. Together with the technology portal Zdnet.com, they launched the news on Monday, September 16.
The security specialist company revealed that the filtered database appears to contain information obtained from external sources, including the Civil Registry of Ecuador, the Association of Automotive Companies of Ecuador (AEADE) and BIESS. AEADE reacted and said it does not collect personal or financial information from vehicle owners.
But international research revealed that the entire filtration weighed 18 gigabytes. The Elasticsearch server contained a total of approximately 20.8 million user records, a number greater than the total population of Ecuador (16 million). The largest number comes from duplicate records or old entries, which contain the data of deceased persons.
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