An Android app on the Google Store has allowed any user to search for personal information for a large number of people in Palestine, including names, birth dates, place of residence and details of their families, according to a report by Motherboard Technology.
The Palestinian Civil Registry application was originally designed to search for one person and claimed to have data on all Palestinians, but cyber security researcher Noam Rotem also found that the server hosting the data itself is not secure, allowing anyone to hack it and get all Data from it.
The report stressed that the hacking is still possible despite the removal of Google application from its store, and Rotem, an independent information security researcher, wrote in an e-mail: "The presence of an application that allows anyone to get details of everyone makes the violation of privacy easier."
"This is a very disturbing development," Susan Bauer, head of legal research and advocacy at Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, wrote in an e-mail.
"As far as I know, this information is likely to be in the population register held by Israel to control all persons in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories," she said. "It also appears that information from the population register may have been compromised or sold for private use. If so, It would be a very serious violation of human rights. "
The Population Registry Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
| Google told Motherboard that it was aware of the case and was investigating it and tried to contact the developer. |
Rotem first told MotherBoard about the application on October 10, and Google told the site it was aware of the case and was investigating it and was also trying to contact the developer before deleting the application on Thursday.
The developer did not respond to multiple requests to comment on Motherboard's messages in English and Arabic.
"I received a link from a Palestinian friend who was puzzled by Google allowing this application to be available on its store, even before he knew that its entire database was leaking," Rotem wrote.
"Palestinian privacy rights are a very sensitive subject, because information is controlled not only by the Palestinian Authority but also by Israel, so making it available online is a step in the wrong direction."
Some users also thought the app was a violation of privacy, by reviewing customer ratings on its Google store page before removing it.
One reviewer wrote in Arabic: "This application violates privacy and displays private information, so I will devote all my efforts with friends of the company to delete this application."
"The app does not violate anyone's privacy, because the information inside the app is already present in many websites," the developer said in Arabic, adding that there is an option to delete your private data from the app.
Google did not answer whether this application violates the terms of use of its store, and it is still easy to download all the data in a single payment as well, although Google removed the application, as the server that hosts the data is still connected to the Internet and is beyond the control of Google.