Database allegedly containing ID numbers of 50m Turks posted online to server hosted in Romania

A database posted online allegedly contains the personal information of 49 million people on the Turkish citizenship database, potentially making more than half of the population of the country vulnerable to identity theft and massive privacy violations, theguardian.com reports.

The database, which has not been verified as authentic, was posted to a server apparently hosted in Romania on Monday with an introduction reading “Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?”

As well as the national ID numbers for all of the entrants in the system, it also contains a large amount of other personal information, including full name and parents’ names, full address, and date of birth. Specifically excerpted from the full dump are what appears to be the specific information of the current president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his predecessor, Abdullah Gül, and the current Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu.

Some typing errors in the posting suggest a writer whose native language is not English, and Turkish media reports in 2013 suggested that the national database was stolen, but by Russians, not Americans.