Phone numbers of roughly 500 million WhatsApp users have been exposed and are for sale in one of the largest data breaches in history. The database, which is for sale on a renowned hacker platform, includes the private information of WhatsApp users from 84 countries, including Egypt.

Walid Abdul-Maqsoud, a specialist in information security, commented in response to a story about the disclosure of 34 million Egyptians’ mobile phone numbers from the WhatsApp program posted on the Cybernews website.

According to him, the information was part of a data leak that affected 400 million individuals worldwide. An employee of one of the organizations he contacted through a third party posted information about the data leak in a forum on the Dark Web network.

WhatsApp started displaying messages a year ago that state to “obtain all user information and export it to (a third party)”—i.e., the companies that have agreements with the Meta company, which controls the application, to obtain data for use in commercial endeavors.

The leakage is said to be done by one of the companies with the right to access user information on Whatsapp.

We urge WhatsApp users to upgrade the app by visiting the App Store or Play Store and block unknown numbers.