"Celebrities Found in Unprotected Real Estate Database Exposing 1.5 Billion Records"
According to security researchers at vpnMentor, an unprotected database belonging to Real Estate Wealth Network was left accessible from the internet for an unknown period. Founded in 1993 and based in New York, Real Estate Wealth Network is an online real estate education platform that provides subscribers with access to courses, training materials, and a community. The researchers noted that the unprotected database was 1.16 terabytes in size, containing more than 1.5 billion records. The researchers stated that the data was organized in various folders according to property history, motivated sellers, bankruptcy, divorce, tax liens, foreclosure, home owner association (HOA) liens, inheritance, court judgments, obituary (death), vacant properties, and more. Within the folders, the researcher found details on property owners, investors, and sellers, as well as logging records spanning between April and October 2023 and containing names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, device information, and details on the files the user had accessed. The exposed information, the researchers say, pertained to millions of individuals, including celebrities and politicians, such as “Kylie Jenner, Blake Shelton, Britney Spears, Floyd Mayweather, Dave Chappelle, Elon Musk & Associates LLC, Dolly Parton, Mark Wahlberg, Nancy Pelosi, and others.” The researchers noted that they were able to see their street address, purchase price and date, mortgage company, mortgage loan amount, tax ID numbers, taxes owed, paid, or due, and other information. The researchers reported the finding to Real Estate Wealth Network, which immediately blocked public access to the database and confirmed ownership a few days later.