We already announced it a few days ago: the numbers mobile phones of almost 500 million WhatsApp users are for sale on the Dark Web. And it is that, according to Cybernews, an announcement published in a well-known hacker community forum stated that it has affected 487 million WhatsApp users whose mobile numbers are being sold.
It was explained to specialized media that they were selling the US dataset for $7,000, the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2,000. The total leaked data has information from WhatsApp users from 84 countries.
Specifically, the database includes phone numbers of users from India, Italy, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France, and Turkey.
This is why that we want you to check if yours has been one of those included in this long list through a few very simple steps.
How to check if your phone number has been leaked
If you are concerned that your data has been hacked, then you can check on the Cybernews website. The place Web has a search engine that allows users to find out if their phone number has been hacked. “Our tester has a 500GB database of hashed emails”states the website.
These are the steps to follow:
- Enter the address of email either phone number in the search engine that you are presented with
- Click “Check Now”
- See search results on the same page
These search results will tell you if your email or phone number has been hacked, and if so, they will let you know where they leaked.
If so, you should immediately change your password. users of WhatsAppknowing all this, they must be very careful since hackers use such information mostly for smishing and vishing attacks.
Smishing and vishing are scams in which criminals try to get users to click on a fraudulent link through a text message (via WhatsApp), email or call, so be very careful.