A hacker with a point to prove posted personal details on 6m Chileans on the internet after lifting the information from government websites.

The unidentified hacker posted data including names, telephone numbers, addresses and educational details on two websites (IT site FayerWayer and community site ElAntro) after stealing the data from sites run by the state-owned telco, an electoral agency and the Education Ministry. The sensitive data was available for around two hours over the weekend before the authorities stepped in, El Mercurio reports.

In a statement accompanying the purloined data the hacker stated that he'd posted it "for the whole world to see... [to] show how unprotected personal data is in Chile... nobody bothers protecting that information."

Police are investigating the attack. The Chilean personal data breach follows days after every working Italians tax bill was posted online. The Italian revenue deliberately published the data as part of a misconceived plan to reduce tax evasion before realising the idea was stupid and pulling the information. ®

Related stories

• Every Italian's tax bill published online (1 May 2008)
• Spy regs used against dogs, litterbugs (28 April 2008)
• US court says IP addresses are private (24 April 2008)
• James Bond menaced by red hot Chilean (3 April 2008)
• Chilean hooker plans 27-hour charity sexathon (29 November 2007)
• Chileans mislay large lake (21 June 2007)
• Google cedes Chilean village to Argentina (30 April 2007)