A Possible WhatsApp Data Leak may have happened as a database with phone numbers connected to 487 million of its users has been seen as “For Sale” online. According to available info, the database has users from 84 countries in it. Today’s post will go over the available info. Possible WhatsApp Data Leak
What Is Known
According to information, via Cybernews, someone posed an ad to a well-known hacker community saying they were selling a current database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers. According to the info, the data by country breakdown includes
- 32 million users from the USA
- 45 million users from Egypt
- 35 million users from Italy
- 11 Million users from the UK
among the user base affected. According to the review by Cybernews, the small sample they received was checked and confirmed to be legit WhatsApp users. Information like the phone numbers associated with WhatsApp accounts can be used for spam, and phishing attempts, and as a starting point for getting more info on individuals.
Meta, who is the parent company of WhatsApp, did not comment on the information, so as of now there is no clear indication as to where the info came from. Possible WhatsApp Data Leak
What Can You Do To Protect Yourself
Unfortunately, at this time, there is no way to see if you are in the WhatsApp database unless you are willing to pay the seller for the information. However, one step with WhatsApp you should be doing is changing the following profile settings to “Contacts Only”
- Last Seen and Online
- Profile Photo
- About
- Read Receipts
You want to limit the amount of information you share with the general (global) public. To check/change these settings
- Click on the down arrow that you will see to the right of your profile picture, then click settings
- In the settings window, click on Privacy
- In the Privacy window that opens, make sure that the Last seen and online, Profile Photo, and About are set to My Contacts.
For additional privacy, you can uncheck Read Receipts. By doing so, the check next to each message will not light up (for either you or the person who sent you a message) once you see it. If you notice when the check next to each message goes dark green that means the person on the other end of the conversation has seen your message.
Final Thoughts
There are numerous ways that the information that is being sold in the database could have been acquired. The only thing you can really do is try to limit how much info you share with the global audience of the internet. The more you make public, the more chance there is that a bad guy will find information that you don’t want to be shared.
Possible WhatsApp Data Leak
