A billion people's data left unprotected on Google cloud server

• The unprotected data didn’t reside on a People Data Labs’ server, but rather was on a Google Cloud server, Troia said

• Troia says he doesn’t know who left the data on that server, saying it could be malicious hackers or People Data Labs’ own customers

Topic
Google

SAN FRANCISCO : A database aggregating 1.2 billion users’ personal information, including social media accounts, email addresses and phone numbers, was discovered unprotected on a server last month. So far, it’s not clear how it got there.

Most of the data was collected by a company called People Data Labs, said Vinny Troia, chief executive officer of Night Lion Security, which is based in St. Louis. People Data Labs provides work emails and social media account details for what the company claims is a billion and a half people. That data is scraped from various sources and sold as a way to contact “70%+ decision makers in the US, UK and Canada," according to the company’s website.

The unprotected data didn’t reside on a People Data Labs’ server, but rather was on a Google Cloud server, Troia said. Google didn’t respond to a request for comment about who was renting the server.