UK Visa Portal spilled thousands of applicants’ passports and selfies online — and hasn’t fixed the leak
The UK Visa Portal has been found to expose sensitive information, including passports and selfies of applicants seeking U.K. immigration visas. This security lapse affects at least 100,000 documents and has not been addressed by the company. TechCrunch has attempted to notify the company but has not received a response from its management regarding the ongoing issue.
- ▪The UK Visa Portal is not affiliated with the U.K. government.
- ▪At least 100,000 applicants' documents are exposed online.
- ▪TechCrunch confirmed the data leak by contacting affected individuals.
- ▪The company has no way to report security issues through its website.
- ▪Applicants are advised to use the official GOV.UK website for visa applications.
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A website called UK Visa Portal is publicly exposing the passports and selfie photos of applicants who signed up and 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 is 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. TechCrunch confirmed that UK Visa Portal is the source of the data leak and verified the authenticity of the exposed data by contacting affected individuals to ask if their information was accurate.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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