WhatsApp is one of the most popular applications in the world. Every day, billions of people communicate through this application. But popularity brings with it some security problems. A new report suggests that someone has hacked WhatsApp and stolen the personal information of around 500 million users.

The personal information of 500 million WhatsApp users is up for sale

According to the latest report from Cybernews, an actor posted an ad in a hacking community forum to sell the data of over 487 million WhatsApp users, including their mobile numbers. The listing also claims that data consists of users from 84 different countries and includes user data of 32 million users from the USA. The list of compromised information also contains user data from countries like Egypt, Italy, Saudi Arabia, France, and Turkey. 

Hackers even created a price list for the personal information in question. For example, the WhatsApp user database in the US sells for $7,000. The UK’s database is $2,500, and Germany’s is $2,000. Unfortunately, leaked phone numbers can be used for many different scams. Relatively older users, in particular, are at great risk.

Meta, the umbrella company of WhatsApp, has not yet made a statement. Everyone is wondering, “how did hackers get this information?”. The application is protected by end-to-end encryption and stands out with its security. However, the incident led to the thought that WhatsApp is not secure.

Also, it is currently speculated that the WhatsApp data of around 500 million has been obtained using web scraping or web harvesting, where an automated data tool is used to collect data from a specific service, which violates WhatsApp’s terms of service. Unfortunately, we can’t share definitive information until an official statement from the company is received.

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(Source: Cybernews)

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In a recent talk with the co-founder of the WhatsApp, Brian Acton, it was revealed that he feels like he sold users’ privacy with the Facebook acquisition. In the year 2014, Facebook bought the WhatsApp for an eye-popping deal of $22 billion. After the deal, he was unsettled with the working of Whatsapp as it was under the Facebook’s influence.

Brian told Forbes that he and the Facebook leadership were in a significant divide over monetizing the app. Both Koum and Acton were opposing the decision of adopting Facebook’s target advertising model. The Facebook advertising model allows marketers to use personal data to target ads for the specific audience. The dissent between the WhatsApp leadership and Facebook led to tensions. Ultimately, Acton left Whatsapp in 2017, later its CEO Jan Koum also followed with a resignation last year.

In response to this, Facebook didn’t comment at the time of publishing this article. But a senior Facebook executive, David Marcus posted that, “WhatsApp founders had been given a different office layout, and more personal space than anyone else.” He also defended the Mark Zuckerberg by quoting Whatsapp’s end-to-end encryption feature which makes it impossible to decrypt the message content. In defense, Marcus added, “I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class.”

The allegations became serious when a co-founder of Whatsapp quoted, “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit,” I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.” 

• Read More: Facebook to Add Dating Service to Attract Young Users

We await for an official response from Facebook on the allegations made by its co-founder, Brian Acton. It can be another setback for Facebook, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

What do you guys think? Share your valuable thoughts via comments below.

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