WhatsApp is an application used by more than 2 billion people around the world, so it should come as no surprise to us that criminals and malicious people are constantly looking for new ways to carry out scams through this platform, and they don’t even have no need for technical knowledge: his plan is to deceive the victims.
Recently in Mexico there have been several cases of a fairly common type of scam, but this time taking advantage of the trust that many people have in virtual stores like Amazon and others. Scammers try to trick victims into believing they are Amazon employees, with the intention of stealing their WhatsApp accounts. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid becoming a victim.
‘Hello, I’m the Amazon delivery guy. Could you give me the delivery code?
The method scammers use to try to steal people’s accounts is very simple, but it can also be very effective: they call the victim’s phone number and pretend to be an Amazon delivery person, pretending they have a package to be delivered but They need a “confirmation code” to be able to deliver it. This code, they say, they received in the form of a text message (SMS).
However, this is actually the passcode that WhatsApp needs to access the account. What the scammer is trying to do is access your WhatsApp account to steal it.. This is what happened to a person who identified himself as Raúl, in statements to our colleagues from Xataka México. They called Raúl to assure him that it was an Amazon delivery man. “Can you give me the confirmation number that just arrived?” they asked him during the call, but fortunately Raúl understood their intentions and did not fall into the trap.
By stealing WhatsApp accounts, they can scam the victim’s contacts
What many scammers want is access to victims’ WhatsApp accounts in order to obtain usurp your identity and thus attempt to scam your contacts, family and friendsusually asking them for money via wire transfer, pretending to be the victim, or perhaps for more sensitive data and information.
This scam method is not new. In fact, as our colleagues from NOW, What’s changed is the theme, but the scam remains the same
How to protect yourself from WhatsApp account theft?
The first thing is just to be very careful when receiving calls from unknown numbers and, above all, when you receive codes via SMS that the person calling us will ask for later. Access codes to WhatsApp or our social networks should never be sharednever.
However, it is strongly recommended enable two-step verification on WhatsApp, by setting an access PIN so that even if a scammer gets their hands on your WhatsApp passcode, they will need that PIN to be able to access your account. It is possible to configure it by following these steps on the smartphone:
- Access the WhatsApp application
- Access the menu Settings then to the section account
- Select Two-step verification and set the PIN code
In Xataka Android | The definitive and simplest trick to read messages without anyone knowing is on WhatsApp Web
