A report from Cybernews has suggested that a hacker stole around 500 million users’ personal data from WhatsApp, a popular messaging app.
500 Million WhatsApp User Data Stolen
The report reveals that a user posted an ad in a hacking community forum to sell the data of over 487 million WhatsApp users. The information includes the mobile numbers of users.
It was revealed that the list includes data from users from 84 different countries, including 32 million users’ data from the USA and over 800,000 user data from the Philippines. Other countries include Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, and Turkey, to name a few.
A price list was also created on the information based on the countries.
As of writing this though, Meta, WhatsApp’s mother company, has yet to release a statement on the alleged data breach.
What’s quite alarming though is that the messaging app touts its security and end-to-end encryption, which makes everyone wonder how the information was extracted.
There are speculations that it was done by web scraping or web harvesting which uses an automated data tool used to collect data from a specific service. Of course, this violates the messaging app’s terms of service.
At this point, we’ll just have to wait for an official statement from the company regarding this breach.
Ram found his love and appreciation for writing in 2015 having started in the gaming and esports sphere for GG Network. He would then transition to focus more on the world of tech which has also began his journey into learning more about this world. That said though, he still has the mentality of "as long as it works" for his personal gadgets.
