WhatsApp: Is your number affected by the massive hack?

More than 3 million Belgian phone numbers have been put up for sale on the dark web by a hacker who claims to have gotten his hands on nearly 500 million phone numbers of service users.

In total, no fewer than 3,183,584 Belgians are affected by this gigantic data leak. The WhatsApp accounts in question were not hacked in the strict sense of the term. The data would have been collected through various hacks from other platforms and cross-referenced so that the list only included the numbers of the platform’s users.

And, bad news, there’s no way to know if your number is affected. On the other hand, we know that around 25% of accounts are affected globally. In Belgium, the percentage may be higher. It could affect up to 50% of the users of the platform, if we refer to the statistics of other affected countries in Europe. So there’s a good chance your account is part of the lot.

Several certainties: the 487 million accounts affected by this “hack” are all active. The Cybernews site checked a sample of nearly 2,000 numbers transmitted by the hacker for verification. And in fact, these were real phone numbers. Another guarantee: the stolen numbers are for sale on the dark web. However, there’s no need to worry too much – your WhatsApp account is not in danger. On the other hand, it is possible that this will lead to a lot of spam messages being sent.

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