This article covers How Scammers try to steal money on WhatsApp. Scammers are everywhere and the world most popular messaging App – WhatsApp is not an exception. They try to fool you to steal your money, but what’s their technique and what you can do to protect your account?
Last year, we posted 10 golden rules about how to stay safe on WhatsApp and how to protect your account, but we understand that 10 rules are not enough because dangers from the web are endless.
Some of you probably already know that scammers also operate on WhatsApp. They usually buy a VoIP number (that are not allowed to be used on WhatsApp) and they may have different targets: a specific person or random people. When they find a valid phone number, they send a message asking something like “Sorry, who are you? I found you in my address book”. They are always nice with you because they want to gain your trust.
They start asking for simple details, for example, what your name and job are and how old you are, and they pay some compliments to make you feel good.
Well, this is what’s happened to me very recenty. A scammer reached me on a secondary phone number that I use for testing purposes, and they pretend to gain my trust.
And as expected, after a long conversation, the scammer asked to be added on my personal social account, as Instagram or Facebook:
This technique is very old but it’s still used in current days because it sometimes works, unfortunately. Scammers will try getting access to your public information on Facebook and Instagram, such as your friends list and other interesting details that may help them steal your money. In fact, their next move is to blackmail you, saying that they will share some confidential pictures (real pictures, if you naively shared them, or edited pictures using Adobe Photoshop) with your friends and family if you don’t send them money. But they won’t stop blackmailing you after receiving money, because they want more money: it will never end.
Why do I want to share this story with you? Scammers may message people in a drastic moment of psychological or sentimental fragility and be able to fool them. You need to know what’s behind a WhatsApp account.
What can you do to protect your identity? You should always ignore unknown contacts and do not share private information such as your personal social account. You can also report the contact to WhatsApp from their contact info, but you can also report specific messages. In addition, be sure to set the privacy setting for your profile photo to “My Contacts”. If something goes wrong, please report anything to the police: the police may be able to locate the phone number.
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