New Delhi, Tech Desk. If you are a Whatsapp users, then this is important news for you. A bug has surfaced in the instant messaging app Whatsapp, due to which the mobile numbers of millions of users have been revealed in Google Search. Independent cyber security researcher Atul Jayaram has revealed through his blog post that due to this bug, mobile numbers of 29,000 to 30,000 Whatsapp users are available in plain text form, due to which any internet user can use it.
The researcher has made it clear that due to this bug, users from almost all countries including the US, UK and India have been affected. Jayaram has further written in his blog that because of this bug the users’ data has become available in the open web and not in the dark web, due to which it is quite easy to access. Researcher has said in his post that users’ mobile numbers are being put at risk because of Whatsapp’s feature ‘Click to Chat’. Because of which any normal internet user can also search the mobile number of Whatsapp users. Whatsapp owned company Facebook has made it clear that this is not a big deal. Google search has the same results that users have selected to make themselves public
If you are also unaware of this feature of Whatsapp, then let us know that through the ‘Click to Chat’ feature, users are easily able to chat with visitors on the website. This feature works through a Quick Response (QR) code image. Chatting can be done by clicking on a URL through this feature. Visitors do not need to dial the number for this. They can take full access to the phone number.
Independent cyber researcher Jairam says that the problem with this feature is that users’ mobile numbers also come in Google Search, which is because the meta data of the search engine ‘Click to Chat’ is a part of people’s phone number URL Are coming up as According to the researcher, this is the reason why Whatsapp mobile numbers of users are coming up as plain text.
