Experts urge immediate review of WhatsApp privacy settings
Cybersecurity researchers and the research team from the University of Vienna in Austria have announced that a major vulnerability in the WhatsApp web version allows for the extraction of phone numbers of all 35 billion users of this messaging app.
They have also managed to recover profile pictures of 57% of users and the profile text of 29% of accounts without using any advanced hacking methods.
This process was carried out simply by adding a large number of phone numbers to WhatsApp Web and receiving automatic responses from the system.
In response, Meta stated that the leaked information was public data, and users who had restricted their privacy settings were not exposed to this extraction.
Experts recommend that users review their privacy settings, limit the display of their profile pictures and information, and avoid sharing unnecessary personal data.
This is not the first time WhatsApp has faced data leaks; in 2022, information of 32 million American users was also leaked.