Well, all these are frauds that use this well-known instant messaging app to profit from its users. Cybercriminals take advantage of the ignorance of many of their users to make money illegally.
Here we will discuss the frauds that have occurred and are occurring, to this day, through this well-known app.
FRAUDS BY WHATSAPP:
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THE MERCADONA SCAM AND ITS DISCOUNT VOUCHERS:
Didn't you get a message from one of your contacts, telling you that if we participated in a survey they would give us a €150 voucher to spend at Mercadona? We did and it's a good thing we didn't agree to the request because they requested your personal data and then asked us to share it with ten people on WhatsApp. This made the message go viral.
Those who bit into this scam subscribed to a premium messaging service, in which the user has to pay for each message received.
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FAKE INVITATIONS TO CALL ACTIVATION:
This scam was created when WhatsApp announced that it would be possible to make calls from the app. Such was the avalanche of people who wanted to use this new function that cybercriminals designed malware with a link, which when clicked automatically downloaded the virus to the mobile.This malware was a Trojan that stole user information.
Also, to make it go viral, he asked us to invite our 10 most active contacts on this messaging app.
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FAKE WHATSAPP WEBSITES:
With the birth of WhatsApp Web, many fraud lovers saw a vein and created fraudulent sites that imitated the original. In this type of fake web pages there were two types of scam:
1- The phone number of the unwary is requested and they are subscribed to premium SMS services.
2- They were made to download a disguised Trojan that allowed hackers to obtain confidential information.
Be careful with this. You already know that WhatsApp web does not ask for phone numbers or make you download any file or anything.
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THE SCAM OF THE DOUBLE BLUE CHECK:
Do you remember the commotion that was caused when the topic of Check Azul appeared in WhatsApp conversations? Well, cybercriminals found another opportunity to do their thing. Many of us saw it as an invasion of our privacy and wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible.
Well, the scammers designed a fraud with which they told us how to get rid of the double blue confirmation, which we can do from the app itself. Those who fell for this scam found themselves subscribed to a premium SMS service.
- THE "CAN'T YOU GET MY MESSAGES?" SCAM:
Another of the Whatsapp frauds that occurred, is one in which the user received an SMS message from a number of less than nine characters, like this « I am writing to you on WhatsApp. Tell me if you get my messages. "
With this simple message, the criminals got many people to reply to the message, which made them subscribe to premium messaging services, which brought them quite a lot of benefits.
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WHATSAPP GOLD VERSION:
In this fraud, the National Police and the Civil Guard had to be used in order to be detected. For people who fell for it, the cost it could cause ranged up to €36 per month.
The thing is that on different social networks, messages appeared informing WhatsApp users of the possibility of accessing a GOLD version of the app, which would provide us with new and useful functions.
Those who clicked on the link were transported to a web page that asked for their phone number. If you gave it, you were subscribed to a Premium messaging service that cost €1.45 per message received, up to a maximum of €36.25 per month.
And so far the review of the most notorious WhatsApp scams and we hope that you have not stung any of them and if you have, you have been lucky not to have been scammed.
Greetings and see you next time.
