Many researchers all around the world are concerned about the threat of cybercrimes and online security. They believe that when the users download apps like WhatsApp and Telegram they risk their privacy. Recently a research was conducted by the group of professionals from the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Würzburg which proved that installing apps like WhatsApp gives hackers access to your personal information. As per them, these hackers use your phone number and other personal information which is usually easily available to hack into your accounts and the users won't even realize that their account has been hacked.
To give evidence to the general public, the investigators researched 10% of the phone numbers of the entire US population and within a few days, they were able to collect the entire information about the users. The investigators immediately analyzed the human behavior as 50% of the active WhatsApp users had a public profile picture. And around 90% of the users had a public ‘about’. This information makes it easy for the hackers to hack into an individual's account and in some cases hacking one account will make it easier for the hackers to hack another account. Out of the entire population, only 40% of the users were the ones who were concerned about their privacy. The hackers take all the personal information from a person's WhatsApp account and make many more scam accounts which might even risk the lives of the users.
Telegram, one of the most used apps for messaging recently launched a new contact discovery update although the update was very beneficial for the users it turned out to be a dangerous update as by this most of the personal information of the users is getting exposed. Almost all the chatting apps transfer all the information to their servers and the attackers hack into the server to get the information of the public.
After many recent issues that the users had with these apps, the app designers made many new changes to their privacy policies now the users can update their profile pictures and can change the mode to my contacts only this way no unknown person will be able to see your profile picture. Likewise, the users can update their verification codes so that whenever someone tries to hack into their account they will have put a password which will not be easy to crack. The researchers have requested the general public to change their privacy settings to protect themselves from the danger of cybercrimes.
Now messenger apps like WhatsApp and telegram are paying good attention to the attackers and any hacker can easily be found these days. Even Telegram has introduced a new contact discovery method which is user friendly and is less risky for the users.
Read next: Google’s Advanced Protection Program will now give Chrome users a chance to send risky files to the cloud
To give evidence to the general public, the investigators researched 10% of the phone numbers of the entire US population and within a few days, they were able to collect the entire information about the users. The investigators immediately analyzed the human behavior as 50% of the active WhatsApp users had a public profile picture. And around 90% of the users had a public ‘about’. This information makes it easy for the hackers to hack into an individual's account and in some cases hacking one account will make it easier for the hackers to hack another account. Out of the entire population, only 40% of the users were the ones who were concerned about their privacy. The hackers take all the personal information from a person's WhatsApp account and make many more scam accounts which might even risk the lives of the users.
Telegram, one of the most used apps for messaging recently launched a new contact discovery update although the update was very beneficial for the users it turned out to be a dangerous update as by this most of the personal information of the users is getting exposed. Almost all the chatting apps transfer all the information to their servers and the attackers hack into the server to get the information of the public.
After many recent issues that the users had with these apps, the app designers made many new changes to their privacy policies now the users can update their profile pictures and can change the mode to my contacts only this way no unknown person will be able to see your profile picture. Likewise, the users can update their verification codes so that whenever someone tries to hack into their account they will have put a password which will not be easy to crack. The researchers have requested the general public to change their privacy settings to protect themselves from the danger of cybercrimes.
Now messenger apps like WhatsApp and telegram are paying good attention to the attackers and any hacker can easily be found these days. Even Telegram has introduced a new contact discovery method which is user friendly and is less risky for the users.
Read next: Google’s Advanced Protection Program will now give Chrome users a chance to send risky files to the cloud
