Database of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users’ mobile phones is up for sale

[enaph]

Content source

https://cybernews.com/news/whatsapp-data-leak/

Someone is allegedly selling up-to-date mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users. A data sample investigated by Cybernews likely confirms this to be true.
On November 16, an actor posted an ad on a well-known hacking community forum, claiming they were selling a 2022 database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers.
The dataset allegedly contains WhatsApp user data from 84 countries. Threat actor claims there are over 32 million US user records included.
Another huge chunk of phone numbers belongs to the citizens of Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), and Turkey (20 million).
The dataset for sale also allegedly has nearly 10 million Russian and over 11 million UK citizens' phone numbers.

There also 8.6 million leaked NL and BE phone numers.

https://cybernews.com/news/whatsapp-data-leak/

 

[bayasdev]

In my country it was already so easy to buy real databases with phone numbers from carriers, banks and the govt itself (mostly due to soft laws and corrupt employees)

 

[Zero Knowledge]

It's the same in most countries. ISP's/Telecommuncation companies sell full databases of home/mobile phone numbers to anyone who pays. In most advanced western countries, your home number can be found in old phone books and now online too, and I believe these companies still sell databases to buyers too. Then the rest can be found from data breaches.