Personal Data Of Millions Exposed In Cell Phone Carrier’s Wide Open Mobile App
Information scraping campaigns are becoming more prevalent, it seems, with LinkedIn recently losing data for 500m million users. Facebook also faced a similar issue with its phone contact search feature, which allowed malicious parties to collect over 500 million users' information. Another company, called Q Link Wireless, could be facing the same issue due to a misconfigured or poorly designed mobile app that could have leaked sensitive data. Perhaps it is time to take a hard look at what data is public and how users can access it.
Q Link Wireless is a low-cost mobile provider that also works with the FCC on the Lifeline program to provide free cell phone service to low-income households. They claim to provide services to tens of millions of low-income Americans outside of the customers who use the low-cost "Hello Mobile" program, meaning this company holds a plethora of data. Thus, it would not be good if anyone could search for it.
If you or someone you know is a Q Link Wireless customer, either through the Lifeline program or the low-cost mobile service, perhaps you should reach out to the company to verify your data's integrity. This is quite concerning considering data scraping issues are repeatedly happening now, but let us know what you think of this all in the comments below.