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1.2 billion records exposed in unsecured database

The information includes names, job titles, email addresses, phone numbers and locations.

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor
Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.
Expertise News, mobile, broadband, 5G, home tech, streaming services, entertainment, AI, policy, business, politics Credentials
  • I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
Corinne Reichert
keyboard-security-privacy-laptop-hacking-7923

Names, addresses, phone numbers, job titles and locations were exposed.

James Martin/CNET

Security researchers found an unprotected server that exposed 1.2 billion records of personal data, including email addresses, employers, locations, job titles, names, phone numbers and social media profiles, according to a notification sent Friday to people affected by the exposure.

"In October 2019, security researchers Vinny Troia and Bob Diachenko identified an unprotected Elasticsearch server," according to the email. "The exposed data included an index indicating it was sourced from data enrichment company People Data Labs and contained 622 million unique email addresses."

PDL Notice
Screenshot by CNET

The data had been aggregated by PDL, but the email added that PDL didn't own the server. Rather, a customer likely "failed to properly secure the database."

The exposure was dated Oct. 16.

PDL didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company's LinkedIn profile said it has a "dataset of 1.5 billion unique person profiles to build products, enrich person profiles, power predictive modeling/AI, analysis, and more."

PDL is based in San Francisco and mentions working with companies including eBay and Adidas "as their engineering focused people data partner."