Alert: Whatsapp Group appears in Google search, anyone can join without permission!

WhatsApp groups have once again started appearing on Google search. The result is that any user can search for and join private WhatsApp groups on Google. Earlier, such an incident had come to light in 2019 and when it became public, the company had fixed it. But this issue has come to light once again in 2021. Due to this problem, people’s phone numbers and profile pictures can be revealed through Google search.

By indexing group chat invites, WhatsApp is making information about many private groups available on the web. In this, one can search for WhatsApp group through search and join it. Although we are not sharing exact details about this, but it has been verified by Gadgets 360 itself, where many WhatsApp groups can be seen on Google search. Users who find these links of WhatsApp groups on the web can not only join the group, but can also access the phone numbers and posts of other users included in the group.

Update: WhatsApp said in its reply, “Since March 2020, WhatsApp has included all deep link pages in the ‘noindex’ tag, which according to Google will exclude them from indexing.” Gadgets 360 was able to confirm that the search results no longer appear on Google. However, WhatsApp did not mention the fix in its statement. Rajshekhar Rajaharia who raised this indexing issue said on this matter, “Adding ‘noindex’ tag is not a proper solution as the links start appearing in surface search results after a few months. Big tech companies like WhatsApp have to protect the privacy of the users. Need to find proper solution to keep it safe.

Cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia had informed Gadgets 360 about the indexing of WhatsApp group chat invites on Google. Now this indexing has started once again. Till the time of writing the news, 1500 group invite links were visible in the search results. Some of the links indexed by Google are related to porn on WhatsApp groups. Whereas some other links are of specific community or interest. Gadgets 360 also found message sharing groups for Bengali and Marathi users. Anyone can easily join these groups through these links.