For some time now we use the applications of instant messaging like WhatsApp or Telegram, to communicate with friends, family or co-workers. It is a highly effective method but it also entails some risks, as is the case that concerns us now.
If we focus on the most used platform with these characteristics, the aforementioned WhatsApp, it allows us to share all kinds of content immediately. In addition, we can make video calls and use many other very useful tools. Hence precisely its enormous growth and use over the last few years. As it could not be otherwise, this is something that potential malicious users who try to take advantage of this type of malware are fully aware of. Applications.
Only in our country around 35 million people use this application to communicate both personally and professional. The negative of all this is that malicious actors try to scam us through it, as we have been able to verify on several occasions in the past.
This is how they deceive us now through WhatsApp
We tell you all this because at this moment the Civil Guard is warning about a new and dangerous scam that can reach us through the aforementioned WhatsApp. In this specific case, the deception begins when we receive a message through the messaging application supposedly from our son. It comes to us from an unknown number with the excuse that the minor has lost or does not have access to his mobile phone. This at first should already make us a bit wary.
With this, what the attackers achieve is that we do not make a call to our son and continue the conversation through the messaging application. It must be taken into account that malicious actors will redirect it to obtain certain private data of their own through WhatsApp.
Basically our supposed son who is writing to us and who has a problem, is going to ask us for bank details such as the card number and similar to solve the situation. Likewise, there have also been cases in which a certain amount of amount of money that you can go immediately to that same number.
How to avoid these scams through the application
Perhaps many of you find it somewhat absurd to fall for this scam that we are talking about. However, if it is occurring, it is because many have bitten. And it is that a son is a son and perhaps, if he supposedly finds himself in trouble, he will not let us think clearly. But to avoid this type of scam, the best thing we can do is, first of all, be wary of these messages that come to us through unknown numbers.
To make sure that it really is our son who is in issues at that moment, the best solution is to make a call to that number that we do not know. We can also try to make the call to real number of the minor in order to verify their identity and if we are faced with a hoax.
