Cybernews, a research-based online publication, claims that mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users, including 3.8 million Bangladeshi users, have been stolen and are being sold on a “well-known” hacker forum.
Supposedly from 2022, the dataset allegedly contains WhatsApp user data from 84 countries. Neighbouring India is also on the list. According to the report, around 6.1 million Indian user's mobile phone numbers have been stolen.
According to the hacker behind the breach, all the numbers belong to “active” WhatsApp users.
The report claims that more than 32 million US customers' and over 11 million UK members' phone numbers were stolen along with the database.
The most affected country is Egypt with an estimated 45 million users at risk.
Other huge chunk of phone numbers belongs to the citizens of Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million) and Turkey (20 million).
The stolen database also allegedly has nearly 10 million Russian phone numbers.
The hacking forum were selling the US dataset for $7,000, the UK – $2,500, and Germany – $2,000.
The report did not specified how the hackers obtained the database.
Cybernews reached out to WhatsApp's parent company, Meta, but received no immediate response.