{"id":15953,"date":"2020-06-09T10:02:35","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T15:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/?p=15953"},"modified":"2020-06-09T10:25:14","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T15:25:14","slug":"whatsapp-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/real-estate-tech\/whatsapp-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp feature puts your phone number in Google search results #uhoh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using WhatsApp\u2019s Click To Chat<\/a> feature could land personal phone numbers in public search results. Click to Chat is a feature which allows users to begin a\u00a0chat\u00a0with someone without having their phone number saved in the phone’s address book. Instead, users create a link or QR code that will allow the start of a\u00a0chat with another user or business instead.<\/p>\n

WhatsApp is known for its high\u00a0data privacy\u00a0standards and end-to-end encryption for users, but the WhatsApp-owned \u201cwa.me\u201d domain, which stores Click To Chat metadata in a URL string (e.g. https:\/\/wa.me\/) could be exposing user phone numbers. There is no measure in place to prevent search engines indexing this metadata and the numbers are subject to public search results.<\/p>\n

Researcher Athul Jayaram reportedly scoured the domain using Google searches and found 300,000 WhatsApp numbers. Results did not uncover the full names of users but did include their WhatsApp profile pictures. Jayaram reported the issue to their parent company, Facebook via its Bug Bounty Program. <\/p>\n

His application was reportedly dismissed because users have oversight of the information on their profile that is made publically available. \u201cWhile we appreciate this researcher\u2019s report and value the time he took to share it with us, it did not qualify for a bounty since it merely contained a search engine index of URLs that WhatsApp users chose to make public,\u201d said a WhatsApp spokesperson.<\/p>\n

When it comes down to it, this issue can only occur if users create a link to their profile using ‘Click To Chat.’ <\/p>\n

A similar issue was identified previously with links to WhatsApp Group chats. Google later changed its search engine systems to block the group chat links from its results, though those links can still appear elsewhere. With more than 2 billion WhatsApp users worldwide, it is the most popular messaging app used around in 180 countries globally. <\/p>\n

Created in 2009 by Yahoo! computer programmers Brian Acton and Jan Koum, Facebook purchased<\/a> WhatsApp Inc. in February 2014 for $19.3 billion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(TECH) Google is indexing WhatsApp numbers that use the Click To Chat feature and they could end up in public Google search results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337734,"featured_media":15955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[525,194,1234,455,1407],"class_list":["post-15953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-tech","tag-google","tag-marketing","tag-real-estate-news","tag-tech","tag-whatsapp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/06\/whatsapp.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15953"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15959,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15953\/revisions\/15959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}