Public by Design: How W Social Makes Their Verified Users’ Personal Details Visible on the Open Web

On Friday October 9th, German journalist Gavin Karlmeier released the latest episode of his podcast “Haken dran” and shared an exclusive scoop: an anonymous source discovered that the social media company W Social is publishing to the world wide web the legal names, nationalities and approximate dates of birth of their verified users, in plain text. This information is viewable by anyone with an internet connection and can be easily downloaded as a .csv file by people with a bit of tech savvy.When approached by Karlmeier, W Social representatives responded that this is not an unauthorized data leak, but rather, that the information “public by design” and allegedly shared with the informed consent of their users.Interestingly, nearly all the promotional materials and public communications by W Social and W Identity up to now stated the exact opposite, giving the impression that government ID data provided to verify one’s account would be immediately deleted - and that it would be…