Craig Hale at Techradar reported: "A post on a “well-known hacking community forum” claims almost half a billion WhatsApp records have been breached and are up for sale.
The post, which multiple sources have confirmed is likely to be true, claims to be selling an up-to-date, 2022 database of 487 million mobile numbers used on WhatsApp, which contains data from 84 countries. This means that almost one-quarter of all WhatsApp's estimated two billion monthly active users are possible at risk.
If you use WhatsApp, your details could well be up for sale
More than 32 million of the leaked records are said to be from users in the US, with 11 million from UK users. Other affected nations include Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), Turkey (20 million), and Russia (10 million).
Leaked phone numbers could be used for any number of reasons, including marketing and phishing, highlighting the importance of a good ID theft protection tool." And of course new-school security awareness training!
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from www.knowbe4.com authored by Stu Sjouwerman. Read the original full article on techradar.com at: https://www.techradar.com/news/whatsapp-data-breach-sees-nearly-500-million-user-records-up-for-sale