A security lapse at prison pay phone service Pay Tel publicly exposed over 300K callers' driver's licenses

2026-05-29

Pay Tel left an Azure storage server open on the internet with at least 300,000 scanned driver's licenses, other ID documents, user photos, and inmate communications, including texts, handwritten notes, and financial records. UpGuard reported the exposed bucket on May 7, and Pay Tel later locked it down but has not acknowledged the incident or said if it will notify affected users.