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Comment by TrianguloY | Hacker News Reader

Are there any other data associated with the number, other than the country and whether it has a WhatsApp account?

You can check if a given number is on WhatsApp easily, and associate the country based on the phone format itself. Make this for all possible phone numbers (big number, but not impossibly big) and you will have a "leak".

Edit: having a list of WhatsApp users already generated for you is easier than checking yourself, so this is more of a "commodity database" rather than a leak.

I guess this would be the same as testing randomly millions of email addresses for whether they bounce back or not, and sell this knowledge database.

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Photos and I imagine in most cases, full names.

Profile pictures come to mind.

Mostly blocked when you not in the phone book of the user. Thats not a leak, it's just a database of public accessible data. I would say, someone needs a headline, thats all. Ob the prize of this databases you see that they are worth nothing.

Profile, last connection time and status is public unless configured to not be.

I was thinking about data not obtainable without a normal use of the service.

> Profile, last connection time and status is public

Isn't those details (+ profile pictures) only available only you've accepted the first message from another user?

I think I recall that I cannot see a persons avatar when I message first unless they hit "Accept message" after me sending the message.

Is it not like that everywhere perhaps? I use Whatsapp with a number in the EU region.

It depends on the other party's privacy settings. You can set it to display the profile picture to Everyone or Contacts.

That interaction that you mention doesn't exist in whatsapp at all. You don't have to "accept" messages from new conversations.

Not completely true; while you don't have to accept messages for them to show up in your conversation list, when you receive the first message from someone not in your contact list you get the option to choose between "report", "block" and "continue".

That's false. Once again there is no "accept" or "continue" button. If you initiate a conversation and couldn't see the profile picture until they replied back it's because you weren't on their contact list and they added you to their contact list using the "add" button.

https://i.redd.it/8mvd3ez9gmm81.jpg

That's not the same as "accepting" a conversation request like for example it works on facebook.

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