Privacy in Danger: Hundreds of group links available to the public on Google, any group can search and join; Risk even on profile

Privacy in Danger: Hundreds of group links available to the public on Google, any group can search and join; Risk even on profile

Cyber ​​Security Researcher Rajasekhara Rajahariya points out this flaw in WhatsApp

The profiles of many users are also being seen in the search results

It is already in controversy with TSAP's new strict policy, which has come against WhatsApp's negligence. According to the report, the link of the WhatsApp group is now seen again in Google search results. This means that anyone can search and join a private WhatsApp group by simply searching on Google. The group link was first made available to Google in 2019, after which the company rectified the defect. However, this defect is being seen again. Due to this defect, people's phone numbers and profile photos can only be available from Google search.

Can also access phone number and profile photo

Allowing indexing of group chat invites WhatsApp is now making many private groups available on the web, as this link can be accessed using a simple Google search query. Reports are claiming that anyone who gets this link can not only join the group but also see the phone number with the members and the post being shared in the group.

Some groups were porn sharers

Cybersecurity researcher Rajasekhara Rajahariya has provided information on the indexing of WhatsApp group chat invites on Google. At the time of writing, more than 1,500 group invite links were available in search results.

Some of the links indexed by Google lead to porn sharing groups. Some of the links were from some special community. Apart from this, message sharing groups were also found for Bengali and Marathi users. People who have not been invited can easily join groups with this link.

The defect was first encountered in 2019

This is not the first time that WhatsApp has come up against a flaw. In November 2019, a WhatsApp group chat invite was seen on Google search results. A security researcher reported the flaw to Facebook, although the flaw was later removed.

Reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong said WhatsApp fixed the no-index meta tag group chat index on the chat invite link. The latest link, however, includes a no-index meta tag. Although the group chat link did not appear on Google in 2019, this could be a separate issue that would lead to similar results or bring back an old problem.

A group chat link has been made public due to a subdomain

Rajahria said WhatsApp did not include the robots.txt file specifically for the chat.whatsapp.com subdomain, which led to the indexing of group chat invites on Google and other search engines. Web developers typically use a robots.txt file to show search engine crawlers which pages or files they can crawl.

Users' profiles were also made public on Google

With the group chat invite link, it seems that WhatsApp has allowed Google to index users' profiles again so that anyone can chat with users or view their profile photo. People can find the URL of their profile by searching the country code on the domain in WhatsApp, which included the phone number and profile photo. The issue was fixed by WhatsApp in June last year. The company did not comment on the report at the time, but several reports confirmed it.

About 5000 profiles are appearing on Google

According to the report, like group chat indexing, the profile of WhatsApp users has also been available on Google for the last few hours. Search engines are already indexed on 5000 profile links.

Rajahariya searched for the indexing of WhatsApp user profiles on Google. He found that as seen in the group chat invite, in the case of the profile there is no special robots.txt file for the api.whatsapp.com subdomain, which tells the search engine crawler not to crawl its own link.

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