When a user decides to search Google for a WhatsApp number, the messaging company has thousands of phones available directly on the web.
By typing "site: wa.me" in the search engine, links to various phone numbers of users or even businesses will appear.
As reported by Threat Post, this practice corresponds to the functionality called Click to Chat, created by WhatsApp, in which users can generate links to start conversations with contacts outside of their personal list.
It was the Indian researcher Athul Jayaram who discovered the functionality, which can be useful for various situations. It is usually used by online trading companies.
Thanks to this option, WhatsApp can generate a direct link to your profile that can be found through the Google search engine, so that anyone can be found and start a conversation.
According to the researcher, no profile photos or the person's name appear in the results, but the phone number does appear.
In the event that you have your profile photo in the application configured as public, someone else will be able to see it, download it, and start a conversation.
The researcher pointed out that this feature can put users at risk because many can "use the same profile picture on other social networks", generating the possibility known as "reverse search".
Another risk caused by the publication of WhatsApp numbers through Google is that they can be used to create databases and then be used in commercial calls.
The courier company has not made any changes to prevent the numbers from appearing in the search engine, but according to Jayaram just adding the tag "noindex" could prevent Google from accumulating that data.
At the moment it is not known if it is a mistake or if both companies have reached a previous agreement to offer this feature, but until today the option is still available.
If you want to know if your personal number appears in the search engine, follow these steps:
- Enter the Google search engine and type "site: wa.me" and YY XX XX XX XX XX
- The first two letters correspond to the prefix code of each country
- The phone number must be added in full
In the case that you want to take care of your privacy, you can configure from the WhatsApp privacy settings that the main parameters of the program such as the profile photo or the time of your last connection are not public.