This scam puts the security of your WhatsApp account at risk, and could even cause you to lose access to it.
Despite all the precautions taken by Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, to protect its users from fraudulent messages and phishing attempts, hackers are competing in inventiveness to trap us. New, more and more sophisticated scam schemes appear every week, trapping a large number of people. The objective is almost always the same, to recover users’ personal data and then extract money from them. And even if you are particularly vigilant, you are never really safe.
A new mode of attack, spotted by the specialized media Bitdefender, is appearing in Europe, particularly affecting WhatsApp users in Poland, Romania and Germany. But it’s important to stay alert, as these kinds of scams generally end up happening all over the world. Vigilance is therefore required if you receive an unusual message on your account, even if it seems to come from one of your contacts. Hackers are indeed particularly clever…
Be particularly attentive if you receive a message asking you to vote for a certain “Adeline”, the supposed daughter of the friend of one of your contacts who is participating in a competition or for any other type of competition. The message is accompanied by a link. Once you click, you must enter your phone number and then the code sent by WhatsApp. At that point, you are trapped! Hackers can then pose as you to your contacts and ask them for money. And to top it all off, once they have your phone number, as well as the WhatsApp security code, they can take over your account and block your access to it.
To avoid falling into the trap, it is imperative to never share your WhatsApp verification code with anyone, always verify money requests through a direct phone call and never click on a link whose origin you do not know! It is therefore better to remain cautious, even when it comes to a contact who writes to us on WhatsApp.
