There are very numerous users who promptly reported a new one to the postal police fraud which is consumed directly on WhatsApp And, only apparently, by “trusted” contacts that we memorized on the phone book. This is the real deception with which the bad guys try to steal sensitive data up to the bank details.
How the scam works
If many times in the past we have denounced fraudulent but easily recognizable messages because it comes from unknown numbers (and often with foreign prefixes), in this case the notification comes from someone of our knowledge that, without his knowledge (now we will explain why) sends a message to WhatsApp asking for to “Vote my friend’s daughter“. The text is this and is followed by a link: click means giving hackers to steal the data of our account until you access the bank account. The phrase referred to the vote is often motivated to be more credible: a talent show or a beauty contest, for example.
The Code via SMS
But what exactly happens? IT pirates already have stolen The user’s profile that sends us that Whatsapp message which, of course, is unaware of everything. Immediately afterwards that link refers to a fraudulent site that looks like a real web page in all respects. At that point a verification code Which is automatically sent for SMS: if the poor victim will insert it on the appropriate section of the link, the scam will have gone through. If the attackers manage to access our data, they will be able to continue in their fraudulent work by doing a sort of copy-paste of the same message to other dozens and hundreds of people with the intent to make them fall into a trap. The experiences of those who have had this type of scam tell about access to bank data, sensitive data and the theft of the account.
How to defend yourself
As anticipated, it is certainly difficult to immediately understand that it is a scam since the message comes from a “trusted” contact: however, it is necessary to remember, especially when links are sent, to contact the person who sent him for confidence asking for confirmation. Before clicking on the suspicious link, therefore, make sure it is really real and non -fraudulent. Another notice concerns the SMS code: never confirm it when such operations occur because it may be a trap.
As the Corriere Adriaticothe new scam is very similar to that of the fake message in a daughter asks her father for help for losing her cell phone, a technique that was USA to subtract money and sensitive data from users.