One of the world's allegedly most prolific spamming operations inadvertently left backup databases accessible online, exposing upwards of 1.37 billion records and a raft of internal companion information.Chris Vickery, a security researcher who works for the anti-virus company MacKeeper, discovered the databases, which belong to a US-based email and SMS marketing companion called River City Media. In some cases, the records include the names, IP addresses, zip codes and physical addresses associated with the email addresses.The reason of the data exposure appears to be an oversight. The company used the rsync protocol to backup its MySQL databases. But those backup servers were not password-protected, Vickery says in an email to Information certificate Media Group.The leak could be one of the largest of all time, but it's likely the databases contain duplicates. The databases, which were exposed for at least three months, have since been taken offline. It's unclear if other fraudsters or hackers may get already stumbled upon it. Some of records were updated as recently as January.If the databases were to live released in the wild, the harm would be astounding, Vickery says. Abusive ex-boyfriends and stalkers everywhere would have a fresh new source of information on victims. You wouldn't experience the damage all at once, but society would indeed meet over time.Based on preliminarily checks, at least some of the exposed data is legitimate, Vickery writes in a blog post.Investigating names from the list, through social media and act websites, usually shows that the additional details in the entry are most likely accurate, Vickery writes.More Information: http://www.datahacktoday.com/backup-error-exposes-137-billion-record-s...