A database containing up-to-date mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users was leaked and put up for sale, with the dataset allegedly contains WhatsApp user data from 84 countries, Cyber research publication Cybernews revealed on Thursday. 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). Some 2.9 million phone numbers from active WhatsApp users in Hong Kong were also included in the dataset, according to the report. Upon request, the seller of WhatsApp's database shared a sample of data with Cybernews researchers. There were 1097 UK and 817 US user numbers in the shared sample.

Source: The Standard November 26, 2022 02:26 UTC