You can publicly access your WhatsApp groups via Google search

When suddenly a random person joins, imagine discussing important details with your office mates on the team’s WhatsApp team. This person will now have immediate access to information about team members and the group name and profile picture. Finding your personal group chat via Google search is a potential real issue. This issue was fixed again in 2019, but has now re-emerged.

A new report by cybersecurity researcher Rajshekar Rajaharaharia has revealed that WhatsApp groups that use links to allow users to log in could be vulnerable to being found online again. This would theoretically allow anyone to join the group. Indian Express checks for vulnerability and can confirm that some WhatsApp groups may be joining from the web.

Your Share Groups may not be as secure as you think. Invite WhatsApp group chat links, user profiles re-created in public Google Again.
Story – https://t.co/GK2KrCtm8J#Infosec # Privacy # Share # Info # Cyber ​​Security #GDPR # Data protection # Data protection pic.twitter.com/7PvLYuM9xD

– Rajshekar Rajaharia (Azharaharia) January 10, 2021

Enables scheduling of WhatsApp group chats, allowing you to search and join these links for private groups across the web. It allows searches to find users’ phone numbers with profile pictures. If no one in the group notices these unpleasant entries, the stranger can hide for a while until someone realizes his presence. The worst thing is that even after such strangers are expelled from the group, their brief entry still leaves them with a list of phone numbers in the group.

This happened before 2019

In 2019, a security researcher discovered a similar problem, he reported the matter on Facebook. This issue was fixed after it became public and attracted media attention. However, according to a report Gadgets 360, The same groups that were exposed in 2019 are no longer with the index, which suggests that a different issue led to the error.

Even user profiles are now coded in Google

There is a problem with not only group call links but also personal user account profiles. You can now search for URLs of people’s profiles on Google. This allows strangers to access the profiles of the coded people, display their phone numbers and, in some cases, their profile pictures. This issue also happened earlier and is said to have been fixed in June 2020. Indian Express has approached WhatsApp to comment on the matter.

Problems with privacy concerns against WhatsApp are recent. The latest update on the privacy policy of Facebook-owned news site puts it under shortcuts. Numerous unhappy WhatsApp users are, as a result, migrating to other apps.