Sooner or later, you will end up coming across a fraudulent link that comes to you via SMS, WhatsApp, email or any other means. Don’t panic, we will tell you What to do if you opened a fraudulent link on your Android mobile, depending on your exact situation.
As spam protection on our phones improves, fraudsters are increasingly using more sophisticated methods to your malicious messages look real. If you fell into one of these, it’s not the end of the world, although a lot depends on what you did after clicking the link.
If you have not interacted with the link
The vast majority of fake websites that reach us via SMS, WhatsApp and others are simply phishing, pretending to be the official page of an entity when they are not. This means that There’s nothing wrong with just opening them.
Therefore, if you simply opened the website and found that it was a suspicious clone of your bank’s website, post office website or to pay an imaginary fine, Closing it is more than enough.
If you have entered personal data
What many of these malicious links want is get your personal dataespecially if it is the bank’s credentials. Anything you have written on the malicious website should be considered as having fallen into the wrong hands and therefore you will need to take timely measures to minimize possible damage.
If you have entered your bank detailsInforming your bank and changing them should be your priority, as well as checking if there have been any movements on your account. If you have entered any type of username and password, it is best to change your password in all services where you use it.
If you have paid or made a transfer
The worst thing that can happen to you is that you have paid something on the malicious website, because it will be difficult for you to get it back. If you have made the payment by entering data such as your card number, then you can consider that this data is also in the hands of criminals. Call your bank to cancel the card as soon as possible and comment on the situation.
You should also go to the police file a complaintwhich you will need to try to get the bank to return the money obtained in a phishing scam.
If you have downloaded and installed something
Malicious web pages have limits to what they can achieve, so it is common for them to you are prompted to install a malicious application on mobile. These apps, with the proper permissions, can do more damage than the website itself, as they can intercept verification codes that arrive via SMS.
If you only downloaded the app, or installed it and never opened it, then no problem: just uninstall it and you’re done. If you opened it, the problem is more complicated because you can’t be sure what it did after you opened it. The most sensible thing is change your master passwordsuninstall the app and, in the worst case, restore the mobile.
In any case
Whether you opened the link or not, you can do report message and to whom it was sent to you in the request in which you received it. All applications such as Google Messages or WhatsApp have an option to report malicious messages, which helps the anti-spam system to detect them and prevent them from being sent to other people.
In Xataka Android | How to detect if an app or website is fraudulent. Seven things to pay attention to
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