There’s been yet another massive data leak involved enriched voter registration data. You can read about it on a number of sites this morning, but I just want to pull out one quick statement from The Hill’s coverage to give you an idea of what’s being compiled – and shared – about you on a regular basis:
The accessible files, according to UpGuard, contain a main 198-million entry database with names, addresses of voters and an “RNC ID” that can be used with other exposed files to research individuals.
For example, a 50-gigabyte file of “Post Elect 2016” information, last updated in mid-January, contained modeled data about a voter’s likely positions on 46 different issues ranging from “how likely it is the individual voted for Obama in 2012, whether they agree with the Trump foreign policy of ‘America First’ and how likely they are to be concerned with auto manufacturing as an issue, among others.”
The “Post Elect 2016” file appears in a folder titled “target_point,” an apparent reference to another firm contracted by the RNC to crunch data. UpGuard speculates that the folder may imply that the firm TargetPoint compiled and shared the data with Deep Root. Another folder appears to reference Data Trust, another contracted firm.
UpGuard analyst Dan O’Sullivan looked himself up in the database and writes in the official report that the calculated preferences were, at least for him, right on the money.
“It is a testament both to their talents, and to the real danger of this exposure, that the results were astoundingly accurate,” he said.