There are two billion users use WhatsApp every month, and it’s currently the world’s most popular messaging app. This data leak for WhatsApp is most likely the worst to date.
Cybernews reported that an individual claimed to be offering a 2022 database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers in an advertisement posted on a well-known hacking community site on 16 November.
Data on WhatsApp users from 84 countries are purportedly included in the file. A sizable portion of the phone numbers belong to the residents of Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), and the US (32 million). According to Lowyat.net, more than 21 million Malaysian WhatsApp numbers were leaked.
The hacker is said to be selling the US dataset for USD 7,000 (RM 31,563), the UK dataset for USD 2,500 (RM 11,272), and the German dataset for USD 2,000 (RM 9,018), according to Cybernews.
The seller gave Cybernews a small sample of the UK and US phone numbers and they confirmed that they are all WhatsApp users.
The seller assured Cybernews that all the numbers in the database are those of active WhatsApp users but did not disclose how they came into possession of the database, only saying they “used their strategy” to gather the data.
Cybernews speculates that the hacker might harvest the data at scale, also known as “scraping,” which is against WhatsApp’s Terms of Service.
Massive data dumps published online, though, frequently turn out to have been obtained by scraping. Phone numbers that have been leaked could be used for fraud, phishing, impersonation, and marketing.
