The National Police has launched an alert on Monday about a new form of fraud committed through the WhatsApp instant messaging application in which scammers randomly contact women who ask for urgent money by posing as their children. “Mom, my mobile has broken down and this is my new number. Can you do me a favor?” This is how the first messages of this scam are, in which its authors say they cannot receive calls to avoid being discovered. “I have to pay for something and I don’t have the card at hand. You can make a transfer to me and I will return it to you when I have the card at hand, ”they add, according to the conversation distributed as an example by the Ministry of the Interior.
Once the victim is convinced that the person sending the messages is his supposed son, he asks him to make an immediate transfer to an account whose data he provides. The dialogue takes place in just over 15 minutes. When the victims finally manage to talk to their real children there is no going back and it is not possible to cancel the transfer. In recent weeks, the police have detected scams of this type in different areas of Spain. Its authors have managed to defraud amounts ranging between 2,000 and 26,000 euros.
In the event of receiving messages of this type, the Police recommend not to lose your temper and make sure that a family member is on the other end of the mobile phone before making any payment.
At the end of last year it circulated in the app messenger, a scam that consisted of sending the message “Hello, Winner” to users and assuring them that they could win a bonus of 2,000 euros to use on a virtual gaming site, but asking them to enter 10 euros first. The message came from a number located in Indonesia.
On March 15, the National Cybersecurity Institute (Incibe) warned of a campaign about an SMS campaign that pretended to come from BBVA and Banco Santander. Days later, Incibe also warned of other fraudulent messages that pretended to be from Caixabank. In all cases, they included terms such as “security”, “insurance”, “client”, “individual”, “cybersecurity”, “incident” or “verify”, and ordered the user to click on an attached link, with domains such as .ru (from Russia), .is (Spain) or .info. Those urls directed to websites that copied the corporate design of the authentic websites of the banks. Once there, the user was asked for the access codes to the bank on line, to seize them.
Another recent fraud attempt used emails supposedly from Correos with the matter #Your-package-has_arrived!#. The body of the message indicated that the user had a shipment pending delivery, which was stored in the distribution center. The website asked the user to specify a delivery date through a chatbot (a program that allows you to chat, send questions and get answers): the system informed the user that the label on the supposed package was damaged and asked the recipient to fill out a form. For the management, he asked for a small sum of money.
In other cases, the messages received by WhatsApp pretend to come from other widely used apps. Three years ago another scam spread with wassaps purportedly from the online music service Spotify, in which the company showed its generosity by “donating accounts premium” and encouraged to click on a link, which in reality only served to steal sensitive user data.
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