WhatsApp data of 500 million users from 84 countries leaked for sale on dark web: Report

A new report has claimed that WhatsApp details of nearly 500 million users from across the globe have leaked and are now up for sale on the dark web. WhatsApp, on the other hand, has rejected the report saying there is no evidence of data leak of such scale.

Citing a data sample investigation, Cybernews said that WhatsApp user data of over 487 million users from 84 countries were being advertised for sale in an ad on a well-known hacking community forum. This poster was reportedly shared by an 'actor' and the WhatsApp numbers belonged from countries like Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), the US (32 million) Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), Turkey (20 million), UK (11 million), Russia (10 million), and India (6 million).  

The report even claimed that the user data from the US was being sold for $7,000 (Rs 5.6 lakh), whereas the UK and Germany data set cost $2,500 (Rs 2 lakh) and $2,000 (Rs 1.6 lakh), respectively. 

Cybernews claims that it carried out its investigation by requesting the seller to share a sample of the data of WhatsApp which has over two billion monthly active users across the world. Out of the 1,097 samples from UK and 817 from the US, all the numbers were confirmed to belong to WhatsApp users, Cybernews claimed. 

WhatsApp rejects report of data leak

Amid multiple reports being published over Cybernews' claim, WhatsApp has clarified that there is no proof of any data leak in such a large number. "The claim written on Cybernews is based on unsubstantiated screenshots. There is no evidence of a ‘data leak’ from WhatsApp", the company's spokesperson said. 

While WhatsApp parent company Meta is yet to issue an official statement, this report comes after the massive data leak from Facebook which was reported in June last year. According to multiple media reports, private data of around 530 million Facebook users was leaked from 106 countries which the company later fixed in 2019.