A UK visa portal has exposed passports and selfies of thousands of applicants, prompting them to call their lawyers.

A website called the UK Visa Portal has publicly exposed thousands of passport and selfie photos of applicants who paid the site to obtain UK immigration visas, TechCrunch has learned.

An anonymous person alerted TechCrunch to the security failure, saying the website was exposing at least 100,000 documents from people who uploaded their passports and selfies to the website as part of the application process.

The website is not affiliated with the UK government, and some have complained that they mistakenly paid fees to this company instead of using the official GOV.UK website.

The exposed data has been protected since Wednesday night, hours after we published our initial article about the incident. Given the highly sensitive nature of the exposed data, TechCrunch revealed that there were ongoing security concerns and did not disclose specific details to minimize further risks to privacy.

TechCrunch has yet to hear back from UK Visa Portal management. Instead of resolving the issue when we contacted them, the company sent a lawyer and a public relations firm instead.

The security failure is the latest example of a company publicly exposing its customers’ sensitive government-issued identity documents in recent weeks, often caused by configuration errors rather than external cyberattacks. Passport exposure is especially problematic at a time when online identity verification is increasing globally as governments implement age verification laws.

The company’s lack of response also leaves open the question of whether it will notify affected customers that their passports were publicly exposed, or whether it will notify regulators under U.S. state and European data breach notification laws.

Exposed passport, selfie, location information

The data breach occurred on a public Amazon-hosted storage server (also known as a bucket) that the UK Visa Portal uses to host user-uploaded passports and selfies.

Although the contents of the bucket were not publicly listed, anyone who knew the web address of each file could still access and view them. The person who notified us of the exposure said that a bug in the backend of the UK Visa portal website allowed them to see a list of files contained in the bucket.

TechCrunch confirmed that the UK Visa portal (also known as UK Visit and ETA-Pass) was the source of the data breach and verified the authenticity of the exposed data by contacting affected individuals to ask if the information was accurate.

Many user-uploaded photos also include their exact physical location, revealing where the image was taken. In some cases, this location data was accurate enough to reveal the home address of the person who took the image.

The UK Visa portal does not provide a way to report security issues through its website, and the website does not provide the names or contact information of company executives. TechCrunch sent an email to the email address listed on the UK Visa Portal website, noting that the company was having ongoing security issues and asking if details could be shared with management and with whom to resolve the issue. TechCrunch explained that the details could not be shared with the company’s regular customer support inbox because it could not guarantee that the exposed data would not be misused.

A customer support representative provided TechCrunch with the name and email address of Michael Taylor, who we were told was the administrator of the UK Visa Portal. The person did not respond to our inquiries.

Soon after, lawyers from US law firm BakerHostetler and representatives from public relations firm FTI Consulting contacted TechCrunch seeking information on the matter from the UK Visa Portal. At TechCrunch’s request, the attorney failed to provide evidence that he was authorized to speak on behalf of the company, including providing public records confirming the names and roles of the individuals he claimed to represent. We reiterate that information about security issues cannot be shared outside of company management.

He added that if Taylor or another administrator is willing to accept information about the security failure, they can contact him or his attorney can copy it to the email thread. We didn’t hear back.

After our story was published and the bucket was secured, TechCrunch presented the attorney with a series of questions about the security failure. Questions we asked BakerHostetler partner Ryan Christian included how long Amazon-hosted buckets were exposed, why they were exposed, and whether the company has logs that could help determine whether anyone accessed or downloaded the exposed data. We also asked who is responsible for cyber security at the UK Visa Portal. Christian didn’t respond.

The UK Visa Portal is said to be run by a company called Active Leadgen LLC, which claims to be based in the United Arab Emirates. TechCrunch cannot independently verify this.

There is no need to use a third-party service to apply for a UK electronic travel authorization unless you hire an immigration lawyer, and applicants must apply through the UK government website.

Originally published May 26 and updated with additional information about the security error.

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