Security lapse at prison pay phone service Pay Tel publicly exposed over 300K callers’ driver’s licenses

UpGuard found a public Microsoft Azure storage server linked to prison calling provider Pay Tel.

The exposed data included at least 300,000 driver’s license scans, other IDs, profile photos, inmate messages, handwritten notes, and financial records.

Pay Tel was alerted in May 2026 and later secured the server, but it has not publicly acknowledged the incident.

The breach put highly sensitive identity and prison communications data at risk for hundreds of thousands of people.