At least that’s how a report delivered by Cybernews, which indicates that a base with almost 500 million mobile phones of users of the popular instant messaging application.
This data set, which has been put up for sale on a hacker forum, contains 487 million mobile phone numbers of WhatsApp users from 84 countries, including Mexico, a country with 13,330,561 records.
The matter is not minor if we consider that WhatsApp is the digital application most used by Internet users in Mexico, with 78 million users, according to figures from the MX Internet Association.
Much of the allegedly leaked numbers come from Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million) and Turkey (20 million).The Unocero team contacted the WhatsApp Mexico communication team to obtain an official position on the matter, without receiving any news at the time of publication of this note.
WhatsApp is your number at risk?
The truth is that, as indicated by the aforementioned source, “Cybernews investigated all the numbers included in the sample and managed to confirm that all of them are, in fact, WhatsApp users.”
For now, it is not known exactly how the database was obtained, although it is presumed that it could be an escape or backup information gathering strategy, which violates WhatsApp’s terms of service.
Leaked phone numbers could be used for marketing, phishing, phishing, and fraud.
In reality, there is no direct and clear way to know if our number is at risk. However, it is recommended not to deliver data of any kind through unidentified chats, as well as to block and report those conversations that the user does not recognize.