{"id":257669,"date":"2026-05-28T06:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T08:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:00:13","slug":"a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fake UK Visa Site Left 100,000 Passports Wide Open. Then Sent Lawyers Instead of a Fix."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/securityaffairs.com\/192809\/security\/a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix.html?amp\">A Fake UK Visa Site Left 100,000 Passports Wide Open. Then Sent Lawyers Instead of a Fix.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/securityaffairs.com\/192809\/security\/a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix.html?amp\">https:\/\/securityaffairs.com\/192809\/security\/a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix.html?amp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-28 06:47:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"securityaffairs.com\">securityaffairs.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><h2>A Fake UK Visa Site Left 100,000 Passports Wide Open<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span> Pierluigi Paganini<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/securityaffairs.com\/wp-content\/themes\/security_affairs\/images\/clock-icon.svg\" alt=\"\"\/> May 28, 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid mb-4\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/securityaffairs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/data-leak-US-Government.jpg?fit=939%2C928&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A third-party UK visa site exposed passports and selfies on a public AWS server. It\u2019s not official GOV.UK and affected at least 100,000 documents.<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">UK Visa Portal is not run by the British government. It\u2019s a third-party service, apparently operated by a UAE-registered company called Active Leadgen LLC, that charges fees to help people apply for UK electronic travel authorizations. You don\u2019t need it. The actual application takes minutes on GOV.UK and costs nothing extra. Thousands of people used it anyway, and now their passports and selfies have been sitting exposed on a public Amazon storage server.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch learned about the leak from an anonymous tipster who said the site was exposing at least 100,000 documents. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhile the bucket was not publicly listing its contents, the files within were still accessible and viewable to anyone who knew the web address of each file.\u201d reads the report published by TechCrunch.\u201dThe person who notified us about the exposure said a bug on the UK Visa Portal website\u2019s back end allowed them to view the list of files contained in the bucket.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch confirmed the exposure and verified it was real by contacting affected individuals directly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The data wasn\u2019t just passport scans. Many of the uploaded selfies also carried embedded GPS coordinates, accurate enough in some cases to identify the photographer\u2019s home address. That\u2019s a passport number, a face, and a home address in a single file. Identity thieves don\u2019t need more than that. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Passport exposure is especially concerning as governments increasingly use online identity checks and age verification laws.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch emailed the UK Visa Portal\u2019s support address, explaining there was an active security lapse and asking for a manager to contact them with details. The company\u2019s customer&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/securityaffairs.com\/192809\/security\/a-fake-uk-visa-site-left-100000-passports-wide-open-then-sent-lawyers-instead-of-a-fix.html?amp\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Fake UK Visa Site Left 100,000 Passports Wide Open. Then Sent Lawyers Instead of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/securityaffairs.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/data-leak-US-Government.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257671,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257669\/revisions\/257671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}