The adoption process is inherently sensitive, involving deeply personal information about children, birth parents, adoptive parents, and other caregivers. Fowler scrambled to identify the owner of the database, which he concluded was the largely Texas-based nonprofit Gladney Center for Adoption. He then worked to notify the organization about the exposed data on June 25 but received no reply. Fowler was ultimately able to trace the database to Gladney, because it also contained information about some of the organization's employees. “This is the first time in all of my research that I’ve seen adoption data, and it stood out because a lot of these kids are very vulnerable,” Fowler tells WIRED.