WhatsApp is known to one and all. It’s a free to use messenger and is accepted globally and adapted by businesses all over the world. Therefore, it is the duty of WhatsApp to keep the data safe for so many million users. The chats on WhatsApp are secure as the data there is always encrypted. According to a new report a database of WhatsApp numbers of 500 million users was recently put on sale in a hacking community In the mentioned database 487 million phone numbers are actively using WhatsApp across the world including India.
According to the seller’s written statement the phone numbers include a massive 32 million users from the US, 11 million users from the UK, 10 million users from Russia, 35 million users from Italy, 29 million users from Saudi Arabia and 6 also 6 million registered WhatsApp users from India and more.
The data was gathered through scraping by the hackers. All the numbers of the active WhatsApp accounts were stolen from various other websites who store users’ phone numbers. These numbers can be used for spamming, phishing attempts, identity theft, and other cybercriminal activities. The users are not fully safe from the numbers getting hacked but there are few things which one can do to prevent it.
- Delete or block the unknown numbers asking for details of information.do not respond to any such messages.
- One can use the privacy setting feature to hide the information from people who are not in the contact lists.