Alaska’s Voter Rolls Are America’s Latest Data Leak

In a statement released by TargetSmart, it said that the portion of their database that comprises Alaska’s voter rolls were exposed:

We’ve learned that Equals3, an AI software company based in Minnesota, appears to have failed to secure some of their data and some data they license from TargetSmart, and that a database of approximately 593,000 Alaska voters appears to have been inadvertently exposed, but not accessed by anyone other than the security researchers on our team and the team that identified the exposure. None of the exposed TargetSmart data included any personally-identifiable non-public financial data. And to be clear, TargetSmart’s database and systems are secure and have not been breached. TargetSmart imposes strict contractual obligations on its clients regarding how TargetSmart data must be stored and secured, and takes these obligations seriously.

TargetSmart has what they call the “most comprehensive and up-to-date voter file ever assembled.”

According to Bob Diachenko MacKeeperSecurity.com the “records appeared to be a part of [TargetSmart’s] VoterBase, one of the market’s leading national voter file, containing the contact and voting information of over 191 million voters, and 58 million unregistered, voting age consumers, compiled and provided by TargetSmart, a leading provider of political data and technology.

This info can be purchased by campaigns and groups to target voters more accurately. For good or for bad.

After the Equifax breach earlier this month, which was just one of several enormous leaks of consumer information in the last couple years, we shouldn’t be all that surprised that Corporate America isn’t all that interested in keeping our data safe. Data is now the most valuable product in the world. Google isn’t a search company and Facebook isn’t a social media platform – they’re both data mines. And what they mine is worth far more than anything that Pebble will able to pull out of Bristol Bay.

ZDNET has the full story on the breach read it here. 

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