A shocking new report has raised major questions about WhatsApp’s privacy promises. Security researchers claim they managed to scrape phone numbers linked to 3.5 billion WhatsApp accounts worldwide - and the biggest shock is that India alone accounts for nearly 750 million of them.

But it doesn’t stop there. The researchers were also able to extract profile photos of 46.5 crore Indian users, along with details like “About” text, business account info, companion devices, and other metadata. All this, despite WhatsApp repeatedly assuring end-to-end encryption and strong privacy protections.

The findings come only days after India notified the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, aimed at strengthening data security nationwide. Yet this massive data scrape shows how publicly visible information can still be collected at scale, creating serious risks for stalking, impersonation, scams, and identity misuse.

As India remains WhatsApp’s largest market, the incident exposes a harsh truth: privacy online is far more fragile than users assume.