Nothing online is immune to scam attempts. The telematic fraud they are widespread and hackers are constantly perfecting their techniques to make their attempts to steal data increasingly credible. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to identify whether a message with a request is true or whether it is a case of phishing. A new scam that is spreading via social media is that of WhatsApp 6-digit code.
How the new 6-digit code scam works
There has already been talk about the WhatsApp account emptying scam, but there is another fraud in circulation. The scam is very simple and, for this reason, difficult to recognize. It consists of a message from one of our contacts that contains a 6-digit code and which asks us to respond to it by sending the same code. “Hi, I sent you a code by mistake, could you send it back to me?”.
If you answer, hackers can get into yours profile and thus have access to personal data, images and videos. They can also change the user’s name and phone number, thus preventing the scammed person from logging back into their profile. Precisely the fact that the message comes from a number in our contact book leads us not to suspect a scam and to reply to the message.
The person from whom we receive the message is also one victim of the scam because it is precisely by taking over a user’s profile that hackers can use their WhatsApp to forward the same message to the unfortunate person’s address book.
How to defend yourself from scams on WhatsApp: advice
As with all online frauds, as well as job offer scams, the first thing to defend yourself is to always be very careful about suspicious messages. If an ambiguous link or request arrives, it is best not to click or respond in any way. The 6-digit code is used for authentication and should never be shared with anyone.
You can also enable security notifications. If you have fallen into the trap of the 6-digit code scam, one option is to try to log in to your account again with a new code so as to make your profile inaccessible to hackers. If the scammer has already changed the telephone number associated with the profile, unfortunately this procedure is not needed. In this case the only thing to do is report the scam to the postal police and warn your contacts of the risk of receiving the scam message from the hacked profile.
Please remember that to recognize cases of phishing you should pay attention to email addresses that may contain spelling errors, messages with urgent requests, links of dubious origin and requests for sensitive information. You should never trust emails or calls that you cannot reach verify the origin and personal and especially banking data should never be shared online. Two-factor authentication and anti-phishing filters can then be useful to defend yourself. If the scam uses the name of a well-known brand, it is best to report the incident to the official brand’s customer service and make a report to the postal police.
