UK Visa Portal exposed thousands of applicants’ passports and selfies — then called the lawyers on us
The UK Visa Portal has exposed thousands of applicants' passports and selfies due to a security lapse. The website, which is not affiliated with the U.K. government, has faced criticism for misleading users into paying fees. Following the exposure, the company has not responded to inquiries and instead sent lawyers to address the issue.
- ▪The UK Visa Portal exposed at least 100,000 documents, including passports and selfies, of applicants seeking U.K. immigration visas.
- ▪The data was stored on a public Amazon-hosted server, which allowed unauthorized access to the files.
- ▪TechCrunch attempted to notify the company about the security issue but received no response from management, only legal representatives.
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A website called UK Visa Portal publicly exposed thousands of passports and selfie photos of applicants who paid the site to obtain a U.K. immigration visa, TechCrunch has learned. An anonymous person notified TechCrunch about the security lapse, saying that the website was exposing at least 100,000 documents from people who uploaded their passports and selfies to the website as part of the application process. The website is not affiliated with the U.K. government, and some have complained that they mistakenly paid a fee to this company instead of using the official GOV.UK website. The exposed data was secured overnight into Wednesday, hours after we published our initial story about the incident.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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