A hacker claims to have found details accumulated by a Chinese organisation about more than 1.8 million women, including their fertility status. Dutch ethical hacker Victor Gevers says that the data has been registered with details like phone numbers, education, location, marital status, addresses and even a 'BreedReady' status. He tweeted saying, "In China, they have a shortage of women. So an organization started to build a database to start registering over 1.8 million women with all kinds of details like phone numbers, addresses, education, location, ID number, marital status, and a 'BreedReady' status?"

'BreedReady' status is believed to be those women who are still reproductive years between the age of 18 to 39. The data seems to be binary with each woman' dataset either 1 to indicate yes or 0 to indicate no — Gevers who is an internet expert from the non-profit group GDI.Foundation, found insecure data while searching for open databases in China. List of Most Unthinkable Things Banned in China: From ’N’ to ‘Winnie the Pooh’ These 7 Things Are Not Allowed in China.

Here is Victor Gevers' tweet:

Gevers told The Verge, "We don't know who is behind this database and what the intention was...that is the part that worries us the most." He said that the database's IP address was in China and most women in the list were located in Beijing. Gevers in one of the tweets refers to an Economist's video which says that 'China has a distorted sex ratio' and 'population is missing over 60 million women'. It says there is a shortage of brides that is immensely affecting the society in the country. China introduced the one-child policy in 1979 and ended up with the society giving more preference for male children as they believed to provide better support during old age. Facebook Data Breach That Compromised 50 Million Accounts Was Not Hacked by a Third-Party App, Says the Company’s Vice President.

Sharing screenshots of the leaked data, Victor tweeted saying, "The youngest girl in this database is 15y old. The youngest woman with BreedReady:"1" status is 18y. The average age is a bit above 32y, and the most aged woman with a BR:1 is 39 and with a BR:0 is 95y. All are single [89%], divorced [10%] or widow[1%]. About 82% lives in Beijing."

Here is the tweet:

Following the release of the data, a social media debate kickstarted if the information came from a dating site or governmental sources. Some also suggested that 'BreedReady' could be for women who have already had children or something that was lost in translation. The database also contained information about each woman's education, marital status and even phone number. Aadhaar Data Leak: Indane Leaked UIDAI Numbers of Millions, Claims French Security Researcher; Indian Oil Denies.

After Gevers reported it, the data remained online for only one and a half days and was closed on Monday. Gevers in his tweet says, "The unprotected database is not reachable anymore for the last 5 hrs. We will keep an eye on that IP address for a while to make sure it doesn't come back online. We still do not know how the owner was or what the database was actually designed for. When we do we will share this."

Here is the tweet:

Watch the video below:

It also showed that women were being tracked with fields including 'Political' and 'Has Video' sections in it. Some were even linked to Facebook profiles of the women even though the social media platform is banned in China. It seems the women accessed the site through a VPN or while travelling outside the country. Gevers had last week shared the database of 300 million Chinese private messages and worked for the Dutch nonprofit GDI Foundation.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 12, 2019 01:51 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).