Nearly 500 million WhatsApp users’ data from 84 countries and regions including Macau, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States have allegedly been sold online, according to a report by cybernews.com, among which 414,228 leaked mobile phone numbers belong to Macau residents, while over 2.9 million are from Hong Kong.
Cybernews.com describes itself on its website as a research-based online publication “that helps people navigate a safe path through their increasingly complex digital lives”.
The publication said in a report on Friday that WhatsApp has more than two billion monthly active users worldwide.
The report noted that a “threat actor” claimed on a well-known hacking community forum that the numbers on the US, UK and German datasets were being sold at prices of US$7,000, US$2,500, and US$2,000 respectively.
The report said it had contacted the seller and received nearly 2,000 mobile phone numbers of users in the US and the UK. However, the report added, the seller did not reveal how he or she obtained the data but only pointed out that the mobile phone numbers on the WhatsApp database were active users.
Some of the 2,000 mobile numbers were identified as WhatsApp users, according to report. cybernews.com said in the report that it had reached out to WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, but received no immediate response.
Meanwhile, government-owned broadcaster TDM quoted the Office for Personal Data Protection (GPDP) as saying on Friday that no enquiries or complaints had been received from the public about the case, adding that the office was closely monitoring the situation.
WhatsApp is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralised instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service owned by US company Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, according to Wikipedia.
This table provided by cybernews.com on Friday shows the number of WhatsApp users’ leaked phone numbers by country and region.
