South Africa’s data leak contains IDs of 12.5 million children
A database reportedly leaked from the web servers of Jigsaw Holdings contains the ID numbers of 12.5 million children.
Security researcher Troy Hunt – who runs Have I Been Pwned? – revealed the database leak earlier this week, and has started to analyse the data.
Figures provided by Hunt suggest the database contains the ID numbers of 60 million South Africans – including deceased citizens.
New data released by Hunt shows that the database may in fact contain the private details of every living South African – up to 2014.
Hunt found the following in the database:
- Number of records – 66,360,837
- Records flagged “alive” – 57,035,248
- Records flagged “deceased” – 9,325,585
Hunt then classified the data by age group, and found records for millions of children.
“Why on earth would you want little kids in this database? There are no names or other personal data on those records, but why?” said Hunt.
Hunt said that while he sympathises with the company which supplied the data to Jigsaw Holdings, questions must be asked about where they got the data and why they had it.
Hunt summarised the data as follows:
| Age Group | Count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Child | 12,497,835 | 18.8% |
| Teenager | 6,846,237 | 10.3% |
| Twenties | 9,924,186 | 15.0% |
| Thirties | 8,808,888 | 13.3% |
| Fourties | 7,914,161 | 11.9% |
| Fifties | 7,225,028 | 10.9% |
| Sixties | 5,255,083 | 7.9% |
| Old age | 7,206,909 | 10.9% |
| Unknown | 682,506 | 1.0% |
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