In the social networks you can never pay too much attention, not so much for the system itself but for the hundreds of scams which are very popular on these media, taking advantage of the naivety of users. Every day new stratagems are studied to deceive people and steal from them money oh personal data to commit crimes.
It is continually repeated that we must be very cautious when sharing personal information, because every small detail can allow criminals to creep in, who will be extremely facilitated by the multitude of information available on victims.
An often overlooked element is the Whatsapp profile photo, which can instead be decisive. The Dutch police remember this in particular, following an arrest for a crime of this type, inviting Whatsapp users to protect themselves because criminals use profile photos to analyze potential victims. Let’s find out what happened.
Criminals use the Whatsapp profile photo, how and how to defend themselves
As anticipated, the profile picture can be used by criminals to plan illicit actions, given that in most cases it contains many elements of private life and of personality of users, who are often not even fully aware of it. A man from Zoetermeer, in fact, was arrested by the cybercrime team of the Dutch police unit for having contributed to numerous frauds committed against citizens, largely permitted by a meticulous study of profile photos.
The arrested person had a real business under his belt, in which he essentially dealt with facilitating the action of fraudsters by providing them detailed lists on potential victims with all the relevant information. The basic mechanism is very simple, it used telephone directories and computer programs to automatically download the Whatsapp profile photo of contacts.
Then, he created personal ones lists of victims classifying them based on personal characteristics, including gender and age, so that scammers would buy these lists. The preventive selection of users greatly facilitates the work of criminals, who can thus act in a targeted manner and also significantly limit the possibility of failure. For example, the profile photo undoubtedly shows the user’s age, allowing criminals to attack older victims and less accustomed to the use of technology.
However, age is certainly not the only criterion, any information on personal life can facilitate the planning of scams and frauds. For example, knowing if the identified subject has children, nephews, brothers, sisters and so on allows you to play on this aspect by simulating sudden emergencies of family members. Everyone knows the message by now.”mom I lost my phone”, a scam that has damaged many Italians, or the calls received from the alleged ones nephews in extreme need of money who have leveraged the apprehension of many grandparents, robbing them of their savings.
That’s not all, because this apparently generic information about a person can also make it clear with summary precision which services they use, which products they buy and generally what type of life they lead, enough to study ad hoc attacks. In short, the Whatsapp profile photo can put you in serious danger, so you need to learn how protect yourselfwith particular attention to the elderly and minors.
There is no need to give up having a beautiful image nor is it essential to opt for impersonal photos, to defend yourself it is sufficient to modify them Whatsapp settingschoosing that the profile photo and possibly also the status are shown exclusively to your contacts, that is, people whose numbers you have saved. This way, everyone else will see the blank logo, as if the user had no image at all, and their personal data will be safe from attacks of this kind.
