Names, financial information and civil data about 17 million people, including 6.7 million children, was found by security company vpnMentor, according to BBC. The massive cache of data was found across a variety of files saved on an unsecured server set up and run by Novaestrat - an Ecuadorean marketing and analytics company. Novaestrat has not yet responded to a BBC News request for a comment or statement.
Besides basic identity data, the exposed files include: official government ID numbers, phone numbers, family records, marriage dates, education histories, work records. The cache of information also included some financial records tallying account balances of customers of one large Ecuadorean bank. Tax records, including official revenue ID numbers for companies, were found on another file.
Reporter Catalin Cimpanu broke the news about the data breach on the ZDNet website, according to BBC. Access to the data had been cut off after the Ecuador Computer Emergency Response Team had been alerted, Mr Cimpanu wrote.
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