Meta-owned instant messaging platform WhatsApp users’ personal information, such as mobile phone numbers, has allegedly been breached and is up for sale on a well-known hacking community forum.
According to a Cybernews report, some people posted an advertisement on the hacking community forum on November 16 and were selling a 2022 database of around 487 million WhatsApp users’ mobile numbers. The report, which has been confirmed by multiple sources, is likely to be true.
This database of WhatsApp users contains data from 84 countries (including India) and suggests that almost one-fourth of all WhatsApp’s estimated two billion active monthly users are at possible risk.
Reportedly, there are more than 6 million records of Indian WhatsApp users on sale. Apart from the Indian users, the report also claims that there are more than 32 million mobile numbers of US users, 45 million contacts from Egypt, 35 million from Italy, 29 million from Saudi Arabia, 20 million from France and nearly 20 million from Turkey.
According to the report, hackers were selling the US dataset for $7,000, the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2,000.
This type of personal user information, such as leaked phone numbers, is mostly used for marketing and phishing, impersonation, and fraud attacks.
