Hackers Sell Database Containing 500 mln WhatsApp Users' Mobile Phones

Someone is selling up-to-date mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users.

Cybernews got in contact with the seller and confirmed the information. On November 16, someone posted an ad on a hacking community forum, claiming they were selling a 2022 database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers, claiming it contains user data from 84 countries.

The seller did not specify how they obtained the database, suggesting they “used their strategy” to collect the data, and assured Cybernews all the numbers in the instance belong to active WhatsApp users.

WhatsApp is reported to have more than two billion monthly active users globally.

A huge chunk of phone numbers belongs to the citizens of the MENA countries: Egypt (45 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), Turkey (20 million), as well as the UAE (7 million).

Cybernews requested the seller to share a sample of data with Cybernews researchers. There were 1097 UK and 817 US user numbers in the shared sample. The media investigated all the numbers included in the sample and managed to confirm that all of them are, in fact, WhatsApp users.

Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, has not yet commented on the news.