UK Visa Portal left thousands of passports and selfies exposed

A website called UK Visa Portal has been found to have left passport details and selfies of thousands of UK visa applicants exposed. According to a tip from an anonymous source to TechCrunch, the site stored at least 100,000 sensitive documents in an unprotected state. The site is not affiliated with the UK government, but many users mistakenly paid for this service instead of the official GOV.UK website. This is reported by Techcrunch.com .

The data leak occurred due to a misconfiguration in an Amazon cloud storage bucket. Although the file list was not directly visible, anyone with the direct URL could access the files. TechCrunch verified the authenticity of the data by contacting several affected individuals. After the security issue was reported, the data was secured on Wednesday morning.

Instead of fixing the error, the company's management hired lawyers and PR firms to respond to journalists. It remains unclear whether UK Visa Portal (also known as UK Visit and ETA-Pass) has notified affected customers or regulatory bodies about the incident. Such cases are often caused by system misconfigurations rather than external cyberattacks.

The exposure of passport data is highly dangerous at a time when online identity verification systems are becoming popular worldwide. If such data falls into the hands of fraudsters, it can be used for identity theft and other illegal activities. This incident urges users to rely only on official government portals when using public services.