WhatsApp, the most dangerous scams you need to know (and avoid)

Time: 27/Aug By: kenglenn 752 Views

The WhatsApp scams continue to be a problem.Despite the passing of the years, he has made social users more aware - also by virtue of bad experiences with phishing via email - hackers continue to change strategy by finding new ways to try to catch us and share personal data or even theaccount.Compared to the times when we had to worry about the chains of Sant'Antonio and the scam messages shared by everyone, now the problem are real intrusion within your profile in an attempt to blackmail and force you to pay a ransom.For this reason we have collected the 5 most common scams within the messaging app to help you identify them and avoid incurring unnecessary risks.

Watch out for links on the best known brands

It happened with Ikea, Ray-Ban, Gucci and many other brands again: the classic message-it that tries to get you click on a malicious link to be able to sneak into your phone.Delete all the messages that ask you to participate in a survey, which promise unmissable discounts or that allow you to receive incredible gifts directly at home.And if you know the person who sent them to you, contact her out of WhatsApp to warn her that her account has been hacked.

The app-clone to deceive iOS users

The last scam circulating for iPhone asks you to install WhatsApp outside the App Store promising a thousand more features and a series of additional tools that do not exist in reality.In reality, instead of WhatsApp, installs a virus that can damage your phone and steal your personal data, including credit card information.

Paysapp for a fee

Whatsapp, le truffe più pericolose che devi conoscere (ed evitare)

The most classic of the scams that have been circulating for years within the application.WhatsApp will return for a fee and to prevent the application for charge 1 cent for each message or 1 euro of monthly subscription, you should share the text with at least 20 contacts, so as to verify that the account is valid and active;or worse, click on a link to certify that the account is active.All these messages are buffalo and if the first is substantially harmless because it asks you to make the message run, the second aims to install a virus on the phone to steal personal data and credit card numbers.Let's reiterate once again: WhatsApp has become free in 2016 and has no intention of returning paid.

Social hacking

Imagine this scene: you get an SMS on your smartphone with a security code and, at the same time, your best friend writes you on WhatsApp who has the wrong procedure to enroll in a new service and needs you to forward the combination.Lucidly you know that the thing is strange and you should investigate more, but, if you are overpowering and you trust that person, you turn it without beating an eyelash.Here, if you really did it, after a few seconds you would find yourself slammed out of your WhatsApp account without having more access to chats and contacts.Those 6 numbers, in reality, were the security code that served the hacker to associate your phone number with another phone and start spam again with your contacts.The trap is precisely this: first the computer criminal strikes a friend or relative and then tries to repeat the same scam with all the contacts he can find.And then, returning to our previous scenario, impersonate a user of your contact circle by leveraging the surprise effect to make you fall into the scam.Always avoid sending this type of information.

Vocal calls

Another of the most common scams concerns vocal calls from the fake call center, common especially in the USA and in the United Kingdom.The technique is this: the criminals come to know the number of your credit card, send you a fake email in which they warn you that an attempt to access online banking has been made and then they call you pretending to be operators of the bank who need theYour PIN to block fake charges.This dated scam is starting to take the field on WhatsApp trying to leverage the business version and on the closest relationship that is being created between users and companies within the application.But it is quite obvious to highlight that the bank, if he needed to talk to you, would not call you on WhatsApp and would not ask you personal information on the phone.If in doubt, he refuses the request and go to the counter of your credit institution to resolve the question of person.

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