Scam Warning: Scammers Pretend To Be Your Friend To Hack WhatsApp Account And Phone !
WhatsApp, a popular instant messaging platform, is not only popular with users around the world. It is also popular with scammers who love to take advantage of the platform to entice people to click on malicious links and other suspicious content. Speaking of which, a warning has been issued to WhatsApp users around a scam that makes it difficult to detect a malicious message given that it appears to come from a friend on your contact list.
For those wondering how exactly this WhatsApp security scam works, users receive a text message on their smartphone, followed by a message on WhatsApp from a friend on their contact list. Then this friend asks the user to share with him the code that he has received on his smartphone. Once the user shares the code with the friend, the scammers can easily hack their WhatsApp, leaving them disconnected from their own WhatsApp account.
This is not a new hack in the world of hacking and scammers have also been following the same form of cyberattack among other platforms. One of the ways to stay safe is to call your friend who sends you a text message like this on WhatsApp and clarify why he wants the code. However, the best thing to do is never share your WhatsApp verification code with anyone, especially during times when you didn’t request one. There are a host of other security tips that you can follow to keep your WhatsApp account safe. Here are the top five WhatsApp security tips to protect your WhatsApp account.
Speaking of scams and WhatsApp, it was reported in February that hackers created a fake version of WhatsApp to trick iPhone users into accessing their personal sensitive data. The fake version of WhatsApp was found to be linked to an Italian surveillance company “Cy4Gate” and was discovered by a cybersecurity research laboratory at the University of Toronto, Citizen Lab. The cyberattack tricked users into installing configuration files or “Mobile Device Management (MDM)”, which can easily download malware onto the target device.