One of the world's allegedly most prolific spamming operations inadvertently left stand-in databases accessible online, exposing upwards of 1.37 billion records and a raft of internal fellowship information.Chris Vickery, a security researcher who works for the anti-virus companionship MacKeeper, discovered the databases, which belong to a US-based email and SMS marketing company 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 companion used the rsync protocol to accompaniment its MySQL databases. But those accompaniment servers were not password-protected, Vickery says in an email to Information Security 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 trey months, have since been taken offline. It's unclear if other fraudsters or hackers may experience already stumbled upon it. Some of records were updated as recently as January.If the databases were to live released in the wild, the damage would live astounding, Vickery says. Abusive ex-boyfriends and stalkers everywhere would have a fresh new source of information on victims. You wouldn't feel the damage all at once, but company would indeed hurt 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 work 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...