A security researcher recently found an unsecured Amazon Web Services server exposing the personal information of over 49 million prominent Instagram users including so-called “influencers,” celebrities and brands accounts.
The leaky database consisted of scraped data. In addition to account information available to all followers, such as the account name, bio and number of followers, the information included the private contact details of users, such as email addresses and phone numbers. The database belonged to Indian social media marketing firm Chtrbox and was taken offline soon after TechCrunch informed the company of the incident.
Data leaks due to unprotected servers are very common, despite the fact that it is incredibly easy to add basic security measures like password protection while configuring a server.
Read more: Millions of Instagram influencers had their private contact data scraped and exposed
