MANILA, Philippines – The personal information of 87 million Mexican voters were left out in the open on an Amazon Web Services server for an undetermined period of time, before the server was taken down by authorities on Friday, April 22.

The Scientific American reported that MacKeeper security firm researcher Chris Vickery alerted authorities in the US and Mexico to the leaked information.

According to a MacKeeper blogpost by Vickery on the issue, “There was no password or authentication of any sort required. It was configured purely for public access.”

The data leak is also serious, as one considerable problem in Mexico – kidnapping – may be made worse by having the names and addresses of people available for cartels to exploit.

Mexico’s National Electoral Institute confirmed the leak Friday, and is now looking into whose fault it is.

“The fact that this database is published to the public, it is not just a criminal offense, it is a national offense,” said Lorenzo Cordova Vianello, president of the Mexican National Electoral Institute.

Anyone extracting the data from the government for personal gain stands to get up to 12 years in prison. 

Vianello also speculated that one of the country’s 9 political parties may have made the data public to prevent fraud.

In its report, Motherboard added that this is not the first time Mexican voter information have been leaked. Motherboard noted: “In 2013, a website called buscardatos.com obtained another voters’ database from 2010. The site allowed anyone to find people’s personal information by entering someone’s name. Earlier, in 2003, data broker ChoicePoint sold Mexican voters’ data to the US government.” – Rappler.com