WhatsApp correspondence is publicly available

Messages from private WhatsApp groups can be found in the Google search engine. The information leak became possible due toConfidentiality-ignoring configuration errors.

Such an unpleasant discovery was madeDeutsche Welle journalist Jordan Wilson. He noted that the “Invite to group by link” feature generates a link that, after being published on the web, is indexed by search engines such as Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing.

In less than five minutes, the journalist manageddiscover chats that show the phone numbers of 48 WhatsApp group conversation participants in which United Nations accredited non-governmental organizations participated.

Well-known hacker Jane Manchun Wong confirmed thisinformation. He added that there are 470,000 search results on Google for "chat.whatsapp.com" – URL used for WhatsApp group invitations.

To protect private correspondence, specialistsIt is advisable to check the list of group members more often to see if anyone else has infiltrated the conversation. In addition, they recommend using better software for correspondence, which is owned by a privacy-conscious company. 

At the beginning of the year, even the UN leadership recommended that employees refuse work correspondence on WhatsApp.