San Francisco: According to reports in the media, 487 million WhatsApp user phone numbers have been stolen and sold on a “well-known” hacking forum.
Cybernews claims that the file includes phone numbers for more than 32 million US, 11 million UK, and 10 million Russian WhatsApp users as well as user data from 84 different countries.
The hacker claims to have a sizable quantity of phone numbers belonging to residents of Turkey (20 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), and Egypt (45 million) (20 million).
According to the article, the hacker was asking $7,000 for the US dataset, $2,500 for the UK, and $2,000 for Germany.
Researchers from Cybernews were able to contact the hacker and obtain a sample of the data, from which they discovered that the shared sample had 1,097 UK and 817 US user numbers.
They were all current WhatsApp users, the researchers discovered after further inquiry.
The article stated that the hacker did not indicate how they acquired the information, only that they “applied their method” and that all the numbers belonged to WhatsApp users.
Additionally, between June 16 and July 31, WhatsApp India banned nearly 3 million accounts.
Hackers may exploit this database for spamming, phishing scams, identity theft, and other online crimes.
Users can utilise WhatsApp’s many privacy options to shield themselves from prying eyes, such as obscuring their status and profile images. (Agencies)