A file containing hundreds of thousands of RootsWeb users’ email, login information, and passwords was found externally exposed, genealogy site says.
Ancestry’s RootsWeb.com server, which hosts a free genealogical community site, exposed a file containing emails, login information, and passwords of 300,000 users, Ancestry stated in a blog post over the weekend.
An outside researcher informed the company of the exposed file on Dec. 20, according to Ancestry. And while the 300,000 accounts were affiliated with RootsWeb.com’s surname list service that it retired earlier this year, 55,000 of the user names belonged to both the free RootsWeb.com site and also to Ancestry.com, which charges for some of its genealogical services.
