The phones of 3.5 billion WhatsApp users exposed using a simple and simple trick

Generally, applications that make use of user data usually take security measureswhich prevent their theft or leak. WhatsApp is one of these applications that uses the telephone number to establish communication with other users of the same application, although these may be discovered in a simple way and without any tricks. Using a simple trick, WhatsApp lets Up to 3.5 billion phone numbers exposed of platform users.

WhatsApp leaves the phones of 3.5 billion users exposed

As we read in Wired, some Austrian researchers have used a simple trick to know the mobile phones of the majority of WhatsApp usersas well as his profile photo and text of user. Despite being warned several years ago (in 2017), WhatsApp allows add a random number and the app tells you if there is someone behind that number and if they use WhatsApp, something that can (or could) be used on a large scale.

By simply adding random numbers, WhatsApp will tell you if they belong to a user on its platform

Through the web version for WhatsApp Users have created a script that allows them to add phone numbers and check if they are available to use in the application. This has revealed up to 3.5 billion user phone numbers, at a rate of 100 million checks per hour. It was not until October (the researchers warned in April) when Meta has imposed limitations to the speed of queries to avoid precisely this.

Until last October, 100 million numbers could be checked per hour

But Meta’s response, despite implementing these limits, is that this information is basic and publicly availableand that the profile photos and text that were not exposed is because the users They had been classified as private. He also added that, despite this simple trick to get WhatsApp user phone numbers, the company has not found any evidence of what is have used this technique to abuse data publicly available