Security researchers discovered a public data leak at Pay Tel, a prison telephone service provider, exposing over 300,000 callers' driver's licenses and inmate communications. The company secured the data after the vulnerability was identified.
Pay Tel, which operates pay phone systems in correctional facilities, left sensitive caller information accessible online without proper security protections. The exposed dataset included driver's license numbers and images, along with records of calls between inmates and their contacts.
Security researchers notified Pay Tel of the vulnerability, prompting the company to secure the exposed information. The incident highlights persistent security gaps in services handling personal identification data.
The breach affected hundreds of thousands of individuals who used prison pay phones to communicate with inmates. Details regarding the duration of the exposure and whether the data was accessed by unauthorized parties remain unclear. Pay Tel has not released a formal statement addressing the scope of the incident or remediation steps beyond securing the database.
The exposure underscores broader concerns about data protection practices across third-party services managing sensitive personal information in institutional settings.
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