The fraudsters are now hacking your Whatsapp accounts, sending personal messages requesting for PIN or any other sensitive personal information. No social media app sends such messages!
The Delhi Police Cybercrime division is alerting WhatsApp users to be careful about a new type of scam which involves hijacking of WhatsApp accounts.
Read on to find out more about this scam…
The All New WhatsApp Scam!
The scam involves hijacking someone’s WhatsApp account. The fraudsters then communicate with friends and family members of the victim in order to carry out financial transactions.
Delhi Police in a series of tweets said that the fraudsters simply aim to lock out users by using WhatsApp’s two-factor authentication.
They explained how attackers obtain WhatsApp verification PIN from target using a fake account with official WhatsApp logo as display picture. This tricks users into believing that it is the official account of WhatsApp technical team.
How Are The Attackers Tricking the WhatsApp Users?
The fraudster creates a fake account with the official WhatsApp logo as a display picture posing to be WhatsApp technical team’s account.
The attacker then sends a message to the target asking him/her to share the 6-digit verification PIN to verify their identity.
The target gets easily tricked when they see the message coming from an account appearing to be the official WhatsApp team account and he/she shares the PIN.
In fact, the fraudster is trying to login from his/her device into the victim’s WhatsApp user account to hijack the account.
If the victim reveals the PIN to the attacker, the account gets hijacked.
Subsequently, the attackers can then leverage their access to the hijacked account to further send fraudulent messages to friends and family of the target, asking for money, PIN, OTP, etc.
How To Be Safe?
- Never share verification code sent with anyone for any reason whatsoever and whatever be the pretext given by the caller.Â
- Activate two-step verification in WhatsApp and other social media accounts. This will enhance the security of your account and even if the attacker gets access to verification code. A password will still be needed to successfully log into the account.
- Immediately re-verify your WhatsApp account if you have shared PIN with anyone.
- Never respond to personal messages asking for PIN or any other sensitive personal information. Social media or messaging Apps do not send such messages
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