Google is now indexing invitations to WhatsApp groups, making the private group chat links discoverable for anyone who wants to join.

A journalist Jordan Wildon tweeted that “Your WhatsApp groups may not be as secure as you think they are.”
According to the international news agency, Google’s search engine is indexing invite links for Whatsapp Groups. It implies that links of private links are available for free on the internet.

Any internet user can find the invitation link and join the group through Google search.

He wrote, “The ‘Invite to Group via Link’ feature allows groups to be indexed by Google and they are generally available across the internet. With some wildcard search terms, you can easily find some… interesting… groups.”

A user can search the group simply as typing “site:chat.whatsapp.com” in the Google search bar. Users can discover that Google has indexed over 470,000 group links.

According to an international news agency, some of the links were meant to be shared for the public, but some were not mean to be public.

Google users can find group links of NGOs and other organizations. But a few of these groups contain inappropriate material.

WhatsApp has stated to Vice.

The statement says, “Group admins in WhatsApp groups can invite any WhatsApp user to join that group by sharing a link that they have generated. Like all content that is shared in searchable, public channels, invite links that are posted publicly on the internet can be found by other WhatsApp users. Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website.”