Data of 500 Million WhatsApp Users Breached

Phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users are put on sale online in what could be one of the biggest data breaches.

Based on Cybernews, an actor posted an ad on a hacking community forum, alleging that it is selling a 2022 database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers.

The database contains mobile numbers of WhatsApp users from 84 different countries, including the US, the UK, Egypt, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and India.

Furthermore, the actor claims that the data set has over 32 million US user records, adding that the impacted users are 45 million in Egypt, 35 million in Italy, 29 million in Saudi Arabia, 20 million in France, and 20 million in Turkey.

The database allegedly has around 10 million Russian and over 11 million UK citizens' phone numbers.

Earlier, reports indicated that WhatsApp will allow users to communicate on the desktop through the “calls tab” feature within the app sidebar. This feature will enable the users to track all the calling details.

The platform recently released the sidebar in version 2.2240.1.0 of the WhatsApp beta for Windows. This feature enables users to have faster access to multiple tabs including chat lists, status updates, and settings.