MANILA - Voters' data stolen from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) can be used by unscrupulous marketers, politicians, and criminals, an information technology expert warned on Thursday.

Atty. Jose Jesus Disini, a technology law expert from the University of the Philippines College of Law, said on ANC's "The World Tonight" that the information stolen from the poll body's website can be used by criminals to steal and use people's identities.

"Go from the most benign, which is looking up other people's addresses, but certainly for commercial purposes, since this data has been out there for some time now. If I were a marketer, I will download all of this data, and it would give me the names and addresses of many individuals in many places," he said.

"The other use I could think, if I were to use it, is if I am a politician, I can know exactly who is in what precint, the individuals making up a certain precint," Disini added.

For Disini, one of the most troubling pieces of information stolen from the website is the biometric data, which can be decrypted and used by cybercriminals.

"If that data is somehow decrypted or mapped, then that means that your thumbprint, to a certain degree, has been compromised, and who knows how that data can be used for in the future," he added.

In the latest development on the defacement of the Comelec website and subsequent theft of voters' data, the group that allegedly carried out the attack put up a website that made the data easily viewable.

While the stolen data was already made available for download via online torrent services just days after, a website made it easier for ordinary web users to look into individual personal data.

Data analyst Francis Viray, meanwhile, warned the public from accessing and sharing the website that shows the data stolen from Comelec.

He said this can compromise not only their personal information, but others as well.

"They shouldn't (access it), because probably the owner of that website is a hacker who can simply plant cookies into their browser and that they will be susceptible to any further hacks," he said, adding that simply searching for one's name can send a signal to the hackers that the information they have is important.

He also advised those who already used the website to search for their information to clear their browsers and change their passwords to protect themselves.

"They can clear their browser, delete their cookies. Change passwords if they use their birthday as their passwords," Viray added.

Viray also warned against using fingerprint scanning for banking and online payment apps, since the biometric information can be decrypted and used by hackers to get into one's banking information.

"You can opt for the alphanumeric password instead of fingerprint," he also said.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Thursday arrested the alleged hacker of the poll body's website.