Writing at The Hill, Joe Uchill reports that Deep Root Analytics, a firm contracted by the Republican National Committee, potentially exposed the personal information of nearly 200 million voters by storing the data on an unsecured server:

A data analytics contractor employed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) left databases containing information on nearly 200 million potential voters exposed to the internet without security, allowing anyone who knew where to look to download it without a password.

“We take full responsibility for this situation,” said the contractor, Deep Root Analytics, in a statement.

The databases were part of 25 terabytes of files contained in an Amazon cloud account that could be browsed without logging in. The account was discovered by researcher Chris Vickery of the security firm UpGuard. The files have since been secured.