Data of thousands of people who wanted to get a British visa has been leaked

Personal data of thousands of people who wanted to obtain a UK visa was found openly available on the network, Zamin.uz reported.

According to reports, the unofficial website called the UK Visa Portal stored users’ passport copies and photos showing their facial features without protection. According to information provided to TechCrunch by reliable sources, at least nearly a hundred thousand important documents could have been viewed by unauthorized individuals on open servers.

The most troubling aspect is that this service has no official connection to the UK government. Many users mistakenly believed the site was an official government portal and paid for visa services.

This situation arose due to a technical error in the cloud storage belonging to Amazon. Although the list of documents was not openly visible, if the exact address of each file was known, they could be downloaded.

To verify the authenticity of the data, journalists contacted several affected individuals and confirmed the situation. After the security issue was reported, access to the data was restricted early Thursday morning.

Instead of fixing the technical flaw and informing users, the company’s leadership chose to send lawyers and PR specialists to respond to journalists’ inquiries. So far, it remains unclear whether this portal has officially notified affected customers or relevant regulatory bodies about the incident.

Experts emphasize that such situations usually occur not due to external cyberattacks, but because of negligence and errors in system configuration. The exposure of passport data to unauthorized parties is considered extremely dangerous in today’s digital world.

Because online identity verification systems are now widespread, if such data falls into the hands of fraudsters, it opens the door to identity theft and various illegal financial activities. This incident urges internet users to be extremely cautious when using government services and to rely only on official government portals.

Before entering any personal data, verifying the official nature of the website is the most important security measure.