68 MILLION USERS ON WHATSAPP ARE GETTING THEIR NUMBERS LISTED IN SEARCH ENGINES

THAT MEANS MORE SPAM CALLS TO YOUR PHONE, OR MAYBE NOT...

If you use WhatsApp’s Click to Chat feature, your phone number may be showing up in Google search results.

Click to Chat lets users create URL links or QR codes that others can use to reach them through WhatsApp, without needing to know their phone number or have them on a contacts list. It’s an extremely convenient feature, especially for anyone who uses WhatsApp for business communication, but it makes your phone number publicly searchable on Google.

There’s some debate over whether this is intentional or a bug. Google’s algorithm pulls the phone number from the Click to Chat link’s metadata, which is then saved to Google Search Index. Security researchers have labeled this a “leak,” while Facebook, WhatsApp, and Google all gave statements to Threat Post saying it’s expected behavior.

It doesn’t really matter if this is part of the feature or an unexpected side effect; the problem is many WhatsApp users were unaware that using Click to Chat would add their phone number to Google’s search index. There’s a reason people try to keep their personal phone numbers off the internet: It’s a potential security risk and makes spam calls more likely.

So it's not to late to try to fix this, but I will leave it up to you to see if you can figure out what to do....