;Resize=(1200,627)&impolicy=perceptual&quality=medium&hash=6b35d645b885469d3ad5005cddfc64c684aa22bb5124125a3e91a0f7010faee4 "In popular hacker forum – WhatsApp numbers of six million Germans are sold online")
In a popular hacker forum, WhatsApp data is currently being sold by almost half a billion users. Six million Germans are among them.
A hacker has been offering the numbers of almost half a billion active WhatsApp users for sale in a forum since mid-November. According to the seller to “Cybernews”, the package includes data from users from a total of 84 countries. Most of them come from the USA, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Italy.
According to the hacker, however, there are also around six million German numbers. Cybernews has examined a data set shared by the hacker with the magazine. It was confirmed that all numbers can be assigned to active users.
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Millions of WhatsApp users are at risk of being contacted uninvited
The good news for affected WhatsApp users: Currently you are “only” threatened with unsolicited contact. However, if you receive messages from unknown users, you must be careful. In particular, if links are attached or you are asked to transfer money, you should check exactly who wrote to you beforehand. If you are skeptical, it is best to block the number.
Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to check whether you are affected. It is quite possible that services such as haveibeenpwned.com will soon integrate the data sets. Incidentally, he did not want to reveal to “Cybernews” how the hacker got hold of the WhatsApp data.
