WhatsApp group settings scam? Online Scamming is the technique, or we can say, a process through which somebody gets trap in an online fraud transaction or gets hacked.
The United States originated app WhatsApp owned by Facebook, met with some security issues which got compromised last year. By figures of users, WhatsApp has around 2 billion users worldwide and is one of the most used messaging apps in the world.
Just by a notification or warning messages, the user’s data got compromised by hackers. This kind of message can steal your contact information. Although people are aware of such types of threats these days, the way scammers do this is just a piece of cake for them. This WhatsApp group settings scam is slightly different from the previous Scam as in this, the scammer will pretend to be one of your friends and will try to make you a victim of it.
This cyber-criminal do they generally add you to a group and send you a verification code to the associated number with your account. They need you to give the code to them, and you will get trapped the next moment. Once these cybercriminals hijack an account, they can harm you financially or steal all your personal information.
This Scam merged silently into the scamming list as the victimized people were not aware that their account had been hijacked until some suspicious thing happened. The WhatsApp scamemerges as this Scam is undoubtedly the easiest way for the scammers to hijack someone pretending to their known ones and can trust them blindly.
As WhatsApp has a large audience, it is easy to find and hack someone’s account. These Cyber Criminals aim to pull your attention so smoothly to handing you over the one-time code which is much needed to install WhatsApp on another device associated with your number.
Previously there was no privacy to the group created in WhatsApp to add family members, co-workers, friends, etc. Since the security of the users got compromised in 2020, the users and people in the industry have been continuously requested for the updated version with an added feature through which the users can overcome this kind of Scam.
The United States Company WhatsApp came up with an update that will provide to the WhatsApp group settings scamis a Privacy setting for groups to give access over the messages received from groups.
It was observed that there were so many group people or individual cybercriminals who have been auto-adding users to the created group and use it to send malicious links and harmful content.
Once the user was added to the group and involved in the conversation and started showing interest in the group that was when hackers use this WhatsApp group settings scamto take control of the pointed user through the verification code. This took place on a large scale, and a lot of users got hijacked.
These scams usually take the user’s permission without alerting or notifying him while involving in every step of helping the cybercriminal take control of your account.
How can you prevent yourself from being hacked?
We should be cautious while using WhatsApp; what we can do not to get hijacked is not handed over the verification code or one-time PIN to anyone. What more we can do is take a step ahead and set up the two-way verification for our account, which includes the PIN which you have been asked first time when you got registered with WhatsApp and a backup email address.
Also, after adding that feature in WhatsApp settings, we can give control to those who are adding us to the groups. Now, are three options that provide control to My Contacts, My Contacts except these, everyone? By selecting one of the options, we can simply out merge this Scam to happen with us.
What was your experience with the WhatsApp scam? Do share views with us.