Success Making WhatsApp Target For Scam Offers
A barrage of hooky offers, purporting to come from leading shops and supermarkets have shown that WhatsApp, the increasingly popular social media app, is rapidly becoming one of the more fiery battlegrounds in the war with hackers.
Numerous users took to Facebook and Twitter last week to report a scam in which £100 vouchers from Sainsbury’s were offered in what appeared to be bona fide messages from friends in their contact lists.
Unfortunately, the offers were not genuine.
In reality, the web links provided for claiming vouchers were actually more about extracting money in the other direction.
WhatsApp has grown rapidly to win over a billion users in just seven years.
It is the most popular social messaging app by far. However, with this success has come greater interest in how it can be used by scamsters.
Another hoax that has been circulating this year is an ‘exclusive invitation’ to selected users to upgrade to WhatsApp Gold, ‘used only by celebrities, but now available to you.’ Unfortunately, this extra-special version of the App is bogus.
Anyone opting for the download button on this offer will receive payload totally at odds with their expectations.
Another fictitious download is WhatsApp Spy, ab add-on that would allow users to snoop on what their friends are saying in the app behind their backs.
Anyone transferring in this varmint, though, becomes the unsuspecting victim themselves.
WhatsApp’s advice to its users is to ignore any message that appears to have come from the company itself.
It never uses the app in that way.
Also, as ever, if an offer looks like an unmissable one, it is probably one to dodge instead.
