In February this year, Google and WhatsApp garnered quite a few headlines as some public groups, along with chats and member information, started appearing on Google search results. Although the issue was later resolved and the groups hidden, some WhatsApp groups and profiles started appearing again, according to cyber security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia (via Gadgets 360).
This time, users’ phone numbers and profile photos also appear, making the situation worse than before. All people need is the URL of the group and they can participate by simply searching for it on Google.
It was mentioned that users with the links can join the groups and see participants, their phone numbers and the posts they have shared. It’s not sure when WhatsApp started indexing group chat invitations on Google exactly. However, the report adds that approximately 1,500 group invitation links were already on search results.
Also read: Do not know about your messages, but your WhatsApp Pay details are secure according to the payment policy
While some of the groups indexed by Google lead users to porn content, others are specific to some user interests.
Rajaharia mentioned that the instant messenger owned by Facebook does not use the robots.txt file for the subdomain chat.whatsapp.com. Companies use robots.txt to prevent crawlers from indexing content.
As for user profiles, Google has started displaying users’ private accounts along with their profile pictures and names, the report adds. It is possible to view user profiles by searching for country codes on WhatsApp’s domain. It is said that about 5,000 profiles have been released for now. According to Rajaharia, WhatsApp also does not use the robots.txt file.
Both WhatsApp and Google have not yet made any public statements.