Phone Number
WhatsApp rolls out usernames to help users hide their phone number
WhatsApp is finally allowing users to reserve usernames, a privacy feature that lets them hide their phone numbers from people not in their contact list. Meta says that more than 3 billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp’s instant messaging and video-calling platform, which started as an alternative to the Short Message Service (SMS) […]
WhatsApp API flaw let researchers scrape 3.5 billion accounts
Researchers compiled a list of 3.5 billion WhatsApp mobile phone numbers and associated personal information by abusing a contact-discovery API that lacked rate limiting. The team reported the issue to WhatsApp, and the company has since added rate-limiting protections to prevent similar abuse. While this study was conducted by researchers who have not released the […]
Google patched bug leaking phone numbers tied to accounts
A vulnerability allowed researchers to brute-force any Google account’s recovery phone number simply by knowing a their profile name and an easily retrieved partial phone number, creating a massive risk for phishing and SIM-swapping attacks. The attack method involves abusing a now-deprecated JavaScript-disabled version of the Google username recovery form, which lacked modern anti-abuse protections. The […]