500 million WhatsApp users data leaked online; find details

WhatsApp, which has a user base of more than two billion, appears to be in trouble again over data and privacy. A Cybernews report claims that the data of around 500 million WhatsApp users was leaked online and put up for sale by an anonymous seller on a hacker community forum.

While the social media company has yet to confirm anything on the matter, the report claims it investigated various data samples, revealing the leak to be true. Reportedly the leak has affected almost 80 countries, like Russia, Italy, Egypt, Brazil, Spain, and more. The list also includes India. The cited source has shared a graph through his Twitter account, which shows that data of more than 6 million users has been leaked online.

The report claims that the hacker sells the US dataset for $7,000, the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2,000. It did not disclose the price for other regions, including India. At present, it is unknown how the hacker managed to collect the contact numbers of millions of active WhatsApp users.

The report suggests that it might not be WhatsApp's fault and that the hacker might have done it using a process known as "scraping." Here, the data is obtained from different websites instead of any cyber attack. Therefore, there are chances that the phone numbers have been obtained from web pages.

Hackers can use the leaked data to send spam, phishing attempts, identity theft, and other cybercriminal activities. The cited source claims that one cannot find out if their number is in the database, but users can try to avoid scam attempts by not paying attention to them.