If not, then contact WhatsApp (opens in new tab) to see if it can be removed from wa.me. Many businesses would want their numbers to be. If your number does indeed pop up, then ask whether you're OK with having it public. You can do the same by adding your own number, including the country code, to the "site:wa.me" Google search string. Searching "site:wa.me +1 917" got only 29 results, not all of which were actual New York City numbers.Īnd we searched for our own mobile number. We got only three results for that search, because New York City mobile numbers were for many years relegated to the 917 area code. So "site:wa.me +1 212" gets you all the Click to Chat links that include the Manhattan area code. You can modify the search string to narrow it down to specific country codes and even area codes. Click a result, and you'll open a chat session with that WhatsApp account.Ī listing of Los Angeles phone numbers associated with WhatsApp's Click to Chat feature. So you can type "site:wa.me" into a Google search field or the Chrome address bar, and you'll get a long list of results that look like "Message +1 2 on WhatsApp". Google lets you narrow searches to specific domains, in this case "wa.me". If this indeed creates a phone book, it's more like an incomplete Yellow Pages than a full White Pages. We figured out Jayaram's method and got, yep, mostly businesses. Jayaram told Threatpost that he contacted Facebook about this issue and tried to collect a bug bounty, but was turned away.Ī WhatsApp spokesperson told Threatpost that the issue didn't qualify for a bug bounty because "it merely contained a search engine index of URLs that WhatsApp users chose to make public." How to use Google to find your WhatsApp number Jayaram recommends that WhatsApp add a "robot.txt" file to the "wa.me" domain and the related "" domain to prevent them from being indexed. However, another said that "I set up WhatsApp for my business so people should text directly without getting my number."īecause the links include phone numbers - they look like "" - the numbers get noticed and listed by Google's search spiders. No need to implicate WhatsApp," one person whose number came up in the Google search results told Threatpost.
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