this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
48 points (96.2% liked)

Privacy

5005 readers
310 users here now

Icon base by Lorc under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Ategon@programming.dev
danielintempesta@programming.dev
48
3.5 Billion Accounts: Complete WhatsApp Directory Retrieved and Evaluated (www.heise.de)
submitted 8 months ago by IceFoxX@lemmy.world to c/privacy@programming.dev
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] curiousfurbytes@programming.dev 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I do agree that, to a certain point, this shouldn't be possible in this volume, but also, when you add a phone number as a contact, it would show up on WhatsApp as long as the profile has public data. Anyone that saves every possible phone number would have the same result (although this could take ages, thus the issue with the scraping)