Personal details of 2000 Southern expatriates leaked online

The personal details of more than 2000 foreign nationals living in Southern Thailand were briefly posted online over the weekend in a data breach.

This was uncovered by the users of social media after they spotted the names, addresses, professions and passport numbers of more than 2,000 expatriates, living in Thailand's southern provinces, principally Nakhon Si Thammarat province ,on a database.

According to reports in Bangkok Post, the website carried an immigration police seal but used a private Thai web address. The site was openly available without a password, and some users guessed the website’s less-than-secure administration password: 12345.

It was taken down early Monday, but not before the site’s existence had gone viral, the reports said. The removal of the data was ordered by Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon as some foreigners were worried about their safety.

A digital advocacy group, Thai Netizens, tracked down the website’s owner Akram Aleeming, who in a facebook posted that the site had mistakenly been made public during testing stages.

“We were doing a demo,” Aleeming reportedly told AFP, the Paris-based newswire. “As people were concerned it might affect security, we closed it [the website].”