Nearly a million passports and photo IDs were left unprotected on the public internet

A report found that nearly a million scans of passports, driver’s licenses, and other identity documents were accessible through public URLs without authentication. The exposed files could be viewed by anyone with the link, creating risks of fraud, resale, and identity theft.

The incident highlights how basic cloud storage and web access misconfigurations remain a major source of data breaches. As companies collect more ID scans for verification, stronger controls around document storage and retention are becoming a critical compliance and trust issue.