The phone numbers of about 500 million WhatsApp users are for sale on the hacker forum. Cybernews claims that a threat actor has posted an advertisement on a hacker forum offering to sell a database containing 487 million mobile phone numbers of WhatsApp users as of the year 2022. The actor claimed that there were active WhatsApp users’ mobile phone numbers from 84 different countries in the database. The United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Egypt, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and even India were included.
A step-by-step guide to check whether your data is safe or not:
- Visit www.cybernews.com
- In the international formats, enter your email address or mobile number.
- Select ‘Check now.’
Over 2 billion people worldwide use WhatsApp, for the uninitiated. The threat actor claims that the stolen data collection contains the personal information of almost 32 million US users. Similar to Egypt, 20 million people in France, 35 million people in Italy, 29 million people in Saudi Arabia, and 20 million people in Turkey are all impacted. Numerous sources claim that the database includes the phone numbers of approximately 11 million British citizens and over 10 million Russians.
The sources claim that the hacker is offering these datasets for sale on the dark web.
WhatsApp has denied the reports of a data leak that compromises almost 500 million users. The end-to-end encryption characteristic of the Meta-owned platform makes it a secure platform.
