The phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users have reportedly been leaked, and are up for sale online.
The database contains the private information of app users from 84 countries, according to a report by Cybernews.
The threat actor claims there are over 32 million US user records included. Another huge chunk of phone numbers belongs to the citizens of Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), and Turkey (20 million).
“The dataset for sale also allegedly has nearly 10 million Russian and over 11 million UK citizens’ phone numbers,” the report said, adding that the threat actor told Cybernews they were selling the US dataset for $7,000, followed by the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2,000.
Cybernews reported that when they contacted the seller, he shared 1,097 UK-based numbers as proof. The publication also investigated the numbers, confirming that they were all from WhatsApp accounts.
While the seller did not specify how they obtained the database, they claimed to have “used their strategy” to collect the data.
WhatsApp parent Meta did not respond to Cybernews’ request for a comment.
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