WhatsApp Phone Numbers Pop Up in Google Search Results — But is it a Bug?

Minimalist · Jun 5, 2020

A researcher found that phone numbers tied to WhatsApp accounts are indexed publicly on Google Search creating what he claims is a “privacy issue” for users.
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https://threatpost.com/whatsapp-phone-numbers-google-search-results/

Rasheed187 · Jun 6, 2020

Hmmm, this sounds pretty bad.

guest · Jun 8, 2020

Google's indexing of WhatsApp numbers raises privacy concerns
June 8, 2020
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...-of-whatsapp-numbers-raises-privacy-concerns/

Google is indexing the phone numbers used on WhatsApp, and a researcher is concerned that it could cause privacy issues or be used for malicious purposes.

As stated by Jayaram and confirmed by BleepingComputer, there is no “robots.txt” file on “wa.me” or “api.whatsapp.com” domains that instructs search engines not to crawl phone numbers on the website.
As a result, the links which start with “https://wa.me/” get indexed by Google and other search engines and appear in search results.

Additionally, it is worth noting that entire directories of legitimate phone numbers, regardless of whether they have had a WhatsApp/Telegram account, are posted on the web.
This practice has been going on for decades-long before messaging apps even existed and allowed Google to index the numbers.
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Unfortunately, at this time, WhatsApp does not provide a way to make your phone number private.
Those who are concerned about it being indexed should get a virtual phone number from Google Voice or another similar service.
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WhatsApp Phone Numbers Pop Up in Google Search Results — But is it a Bug?

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