If there’s one messaging app that scammers can easily exploit to steal your money and identity, it’s WhatsApp. With over two billion monthly active users[*], WhatsApp has become a popular platform for scammers to ensnare their targets. WhatsApp scam is a big industry.
WhatsApp has a user base of around two billion right now and is the biggest messaging platform. But with its vast popularity comes even bigger issues like WhatsApp scam. With this big user base, the database contains the phone numbers of one-quarter of WhatsApp users. Recently, a database containing the phone numbers of a quarter of all WhatsApp users was put up for sale on a hacker community forum. The seller claims that the database was new and contained 487 million phone numbers of active WhatsApp users in 84 countries.
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One-quarter of WhatsApp users exposed to WhatsApp Scam
According to CyberNews, the source does not reveal how they got half a billion phone numbers of active WhatsApp users. However, said that they “used their strategy.” It is possible that the database was put together through a process known as “scraping”. This involves data gathering from websites. Simply put, this could be hacking. But some bad actors may have gathered nearly 500 million phone numbers from web pages. Then, confirmed that they are used for WhatsApp and put them up for sale.
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Now, this database could be used for spam, phishing attempts, and other such activities. And there’s really no way of finding out if your phone number is in that database. But if you want to keep your WhatsApp profile picture and status safe from possible prying eyes, you need to do this.
You can open the app, go to “Settings,” –> “Privacy,” and change settings such as “Last seen and online,” “Profile photo,” and “About” to “Contacts only.”
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