The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Digital Editor

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

A BAHAMIAN tech professional has warned that a now-removed website that allowed users to search voter information posed serious cybersecurity risks.

Officials on Friday sought to distance the government from the online voter lookup tool, saying it was not an official service and urging the public to exercise caution.

Vance Poitier, a 31-year-old digital customer experience specialist at the Grand Bahama Power Company, said weaknesses in the “Bahamas Vote Finder” website could have allowed large amounts of data to be extracted without restriction.

The site, which circulated widely on social media in recent days, appeared to allow users to search voter information, including polling station details. It was no longer accessible up to press time. People who used it said it provided highly accurate information.

On Friday, Mr Poitier said he wrote a script to query the site and then mapped the extracted data, later sharing his findings on social media to show how voter information could be used to approximate people’s locations within a small geographic range.

He said the exercise did not involve hacking, but demonstrated how the lack of safeguards could allow large amounts of data to be accessed and analysed with minimal technical effort.

Mr Poitier said he was alerted to the platform after a friend shared a link and immediately identified security concerns.

“A weakness inside of the application itself comes from having no authentication,” he said. “Usually, you would need to have certain privileges given to you by an administrator to be able to access this sort of data.”

“There’s no rate limiting, you can go again and again and again… until you pull all of the data from that database on the back end.”

Mr Poitier said the platform’s design meant users could repeatedly query the system and extract information using automated scripts.

“That’s what you mean when you say you scraped the data from the website,” he said, explaining the process. “You can build a script to pull that… and because there’s no rate limiting, you can just keep going.”

He warned that even limited datasets can become dangerous when combined with other information.

“It’s identity theft… fraud, mostly social engineering,” he said. “People can use that to make up profiles of, like, me or you.”

He said the risks are heightened by advances in artificial intelligence and cybercrime.

“AI is moving so fast… it helps us move faster, but it also helps cyber criminals move faster as well,” he said.

Mr Poitier described the situation as deeply concerning and said it should raise broader questions about data protection.

“For me, this would be at the top of my list,” he said. “This would be almost a national security threat.”

He said while a digital voter lookup system could be useful, the current version should not be used.

“I think they should just aim to abandon it,” he said. “Not scrap the initiative, but scrap the way it was initially presented.”

In a statement on Saturday, Office of the Prime Minister Communications Director Latrae Rahming said the government had no connection to the platform.

"The public is advised that the website currently circulating under the name “Bahamas Vote Finder” is not owned, produced, or operated by the government of The Bahamas.

"This platform appears to compile publicly available information from the physical voters register into a digital format. However, it is not an official government service, and no assurances can be given regarding its accuracy, security, or data handling practices."