WhatsApp users alert! Your mobile number at risk, can appear on Google search

Just when you thought things are getting better with WhatsApp and everything has settled, the instant messaging platform has landed in new trouble. A bug has reportedly been found on the app. A researcher has warned about a new WhatsApp feature which is called 'Click to Chat' and reportedly puts mobile numbers at risk. 

The researcher claims that the numbers are indexed by Google Search which allows anyone to find them. Basically, your numbers can appear on a simple Google search. 

A bug-bounty hunter called Athul Jayaram was quoted by Threatpost stating that a bug in WhatsApp’s Click to Chat feature pushed the phone numbers into risky territory and in turn putting the social messaging site at a risk by allowing Google Search to index them. This allows anyone to search your number, putting privacy at risk. 

The Click to Chat feature allow users to chat with another WhatsApp user without having to save their number. This allows certain websites to chat with their visitors without having to save the phone number. 

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Jayaram has said that the phone numbers of users using this feature can show up in Google Search results because the search indexes the feature’s metadata. The bug bounty hunter has stated that users’ phone numbers will be visible in plain text in the URL -- https://wa.me/<phone_number> -- which makes it easier for scammers put together a list of legitimate phone numbers.

He claims to have found about 300,000 number indexed on Google. 

“As individual phone numbers are leaked, an attacker can message them, call them, sell their phone numbers to marketers, spammers, scammers. Through the WhatsApp profile, they can see the profile photo of the user, and a do reverse-image search to find their other social media accounts and discover a lot more about a targeted individual,” the researcher was quoted saying. 

However, WhatsApp claims that it is not a big deal and that the results of the phone numbers only show up if the user has chosen to make it public.