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WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

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Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#81
post #57

Let the SIM swapping, SS7 attacks and the one click zero-day SMS phishing games begin. As I said before, it is never a good idea to use phone number 2FA. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32401284

I mean, all this data provides is phone numbers that have been used (at least once) in whatsapp and this is publicly available via apis and simple scraping.

Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity: does this lead to more identity theft (or misuse)?

I live in Norway, which has a similar system, so I can’t answer for op, but the answer here is, no. Your “social security number” is not ever used as a password or other form of presumably secret key. While you probably don’t go blabbing it everywhere, there’s not much you can do if you know mine. You would also have to physically steal my phone and also learn my secret pin, or break into my fire safe in order to suc…

I live in France and while we do not have public records (or just a very few), we do not have identifiers that can be easily used to do something nefarious. Our social security number, or the tax one is not used anywhere as a secure identifier (as opposed to, say, US with their SS# that is tragically comical).

We do like secrecy, though, and opening up the tax reports and addresses would be a 12 on the Richter scale of earthquakes. I do not know whether that would be good or bad but it would lead to all sorts of social unrest.

Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#84

Are there any other data associated with the number, other than the country and whether it has a WhatsApp account? You can check if a given number is on WhatsApp easily, and associate the country based on the phone format itself. Make this for all possible phone numbers (big number, but not impossibly big) and you will have a "leak". Edit: having a list of WhatsApp users already generated for you is easier than check…

Photos and I imagine in most cases, full names.

No post body was provided.

Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#85
so the leak isn't a leak but a database of numbers they scraped together

> To prevent personal data leaks, regular users should adopt common data security practices. This includes using a high-quality VPN and getting a reliable antivirus program. And since the shopping holidays are close, you can already find great market-leading NordVPN Black Friday and TotalAV deals.

this post is basically spam.

Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#86

so the leak isn't a leak but a database of numbers they scraped together > To prevent personal data leaks, regular users should adopt common data security practices. This includes using a high-quality VPN and getting a reliable antivirus program. And since the shopping holidays are close, you can already find great market-leading NordVPN Black Friday and TotalAV deals. this post is basically spam.

Should be changed to something like https://www.techradar.com/news/whatsapp-data-breach-sees-nea...

Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#88
post #40
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be missing something here. Why would HN care any differently about WhatsApp vs Telegram?

Probably he is referring to that WhatsApp is from a US company vs telegram with Russian origin.

general tendency in HN is Telegram bad, Signal/WhatsApp is good. Even small mistake made by Telegram will be judged harshly, when it comes to WhatsApp, their mistakes are not important.

Yes I am a Telegram fanboy (how can you not like such a beautiful/fast app, in the Electron world where everything takes 10s of seconds to load)

Re: WhatsApp data leak: 500M user records for sale

#90
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is not significant at all. I wonder if HN community would say same if Telegram data was leaked in a similar way

I might be missing something here. Why would HN care any differently about WhatsApp vs Telegram?

WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted (even their iCloud backups are). Telegram group messages are always plaintext / available to Telegram, and Telegram 1:1 direct messages are plaintext by default.
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