Chilean Hacker Highlights Data Protection Problems
A hacker who refers to himself as “Anonymous Coward” has posted the personal details of over six million residents of Chile on a technology blog called FayerWayer.com.
According to FayerWayer, the databases came from the Chilean Electoral Service, the Directorate of National Mobilisation (which manages national military service), the Ministry of Education and a business telephone directory for Santiago. The personal details leaked included names, addresses, telephone numbers, tax-identification numbers and educational history.
The hacker claimed in a note accompanying the links to have posted the information in order to draw attention to data protection problems. He said that personal data in Chile is poorly protected (a concern that he seems to have confirmed pretty conclusively!) and also provided information on how to access and download such data.