Data Leak of Nearly 500 mn WhatsApp Users: Meta-owned Platform Denies Report

A day after the WhatsApp data breach that allegedly leaked half-a-billion users’ record and its been put up for sale on Dark Web, Meta-owned platform denied the claim saying the damaging report is based on “unsubstantiated screenshots” and there is “no evidence of a ‘data leak’.”

A spokesperson of instant messaging service WhatsApp on Monday said there is no evidence of a 'data leak' from WhatsApp. 

“The claim written on Cybernews is based on unsubstantiated screenshots. There is no evidence of a 'data leak' from WhatsApp,” the WhatsApp spokesperson said. 

The spokesperson added the purported list is a set of phone numbers — and not ‘WhatsApp user information’.

Earlier, Cybernews Chief Editor Jurgita Lapienyte had tweeted, “There's no evidence WhatsApp has been hacked. The leak might be a scrape but that doesn't mean it's any less dangerous for the affected users.”

There's no evidence WhatsApp has been hacked. The leak might be a scrape but that doesn't mean it's any less dangerous for the affected users. https://t.co/7x9aDFaKQa

— Jurgita Lapienytė (@lapienyte) November 26, 2022

Earlier, Cybernews had reported that WhatsApp phone numbers of 487 million have been stolen and put on sale on a hacking community forum. The stolen data could be sold or used for marketing or phishing.

A report by Cybernews stated the stolen dataset allegedly contains WhatsApp users data from  84 countries around the world, including India. It also said the hacker was selling the US dataset for $ 7,000, the UK for $2,500 and Germany for $ 2,000.

The report shared the details of numbers of users whose data had been breached.  

US: 32 million users 
UK: 11 million 
Russia: 10 million
Egypt: 45 million
Italy: 35 million
Saudi Arabia: 29 million
France: 20 million
Turkey: 20 million

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