Fraudsters take advantage of the most popular communication channels to try to get you. let’s fall for their scams, which is why it is common to receive fraudulent messages via SMS or email. Given the popularity of messaging apps like WhatsApp, it is increasingly common for scammers to contact us through this app.
Although the techniques used by scammers are becoming more and more sophisticated, there are several signs that can help us detect a WhatsApp scam attempt. In this article, we review some of the most common scams and tell you how to detect if a WhatsApp message is fake.
If you receive a strange message via WhatsApp, beware
Depending on the scam, sometimes it may be obvious that the message we received is an attempted fraud. The problem is that scammers continually change their techniques and sometimes it is not so obvious that we are facing a scam attempt, so it is important to take extreme precautions to avoid falling into the trap.
Generally, one of the objectives pursued by fraudsters is ask us to make a bank transfer urgently. With this in mind, you should be wary if someone contacts you asking for money for any reason.
One of the most common scams of this type is known as the son scam. In this case, the scammers contact us pretending to be our son (or any other close family member) and tell us they had a problem and need us to send them money. Even if you don’t have children, it is obvious that it is a fraud, otherwise it is easy to fall for this scam.
For some time now, messages offering jobs via WhatsApp have also been increasing. The most common thing is that they offer very high financial compensation and the work is done from home. If you receive a message like this, don’t bother responding: it’s a scam and the only thing they want is for you to pay a small amount under the pretext of being able to start working in a position that does not exist.
Of course, not all scams are aimed at tricking us into making a bank transfer. On other occasions they simply try to steal our WhatsApp account, which they can do in a few minutes if we are not careful and which can have serious consequences.
How to detect a fraudulent message
In general, it is easy to avoid the main scams that circulate through applications like WhatsApp if we act with common sense and are aware that it is rare that someone we do not know contacts us with a job opportunity too attractive to be true. . Despite this, several elements can help us detect a fraudulent message when we receive a message from a stranger via WhatsApp:
- Check the number they are contacting from. It often happens that scammers contact us using foreign numbers. They can be easily identified by the prefix. To give an example, we recently talked about a WhatsApp scam originating from numbers with the prefix +62.
- Check the grammar and spelling of the message. Another characteristic of scams that is very useful in identifying cases of phishing is the spelling and grammar used in the messages we receive. Although scammers continually strive to improve their techniques and try to make it more difficult to discover a scam, messages like this often contain spelling mistakes that reveal it is an attempt. of scam.
- If the post contains a link, beware. Phishing attempts are very common via email or SMS, but they can also be done via WhatsApp. For this reason, it is important to take extreme precautions if you receive a message asking us for access to a link, especially if the person contacting us claims to be from a company or our bank.
What can you do to protect yourself
If you receive a suspicious message, the best thing to do is ignore it and block the number where you received it from to avoid them contacting you again.
If you received a message from someone claiming to be a family member asking you to send them money ASAP, you can contact that family member to make sure everything is okay. Of course, we should never call the number from which we received the message: we must call the number we have in our phone book.
Finally, it is important to remember the importance of using WhatsApp two-step verification to strengthen the security of our account, as well as configuring the application to prevent people from adding us to groups without our consent.
By | UnoTV
Cover image | Brett Jordan (Unsplash)
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