4 Dangerous WhatsApp messages and SMS may steal your money online

Fraudsters are using WhatsApp and SMS a lot to message people and lure them into spending money. There have been a lot of instances of scammers texting people on WhatsApp in order to lure them into their fraudulent schemes.

The dangerous messages that are created to steal users’ money online include job selection messages, messages promising cash prize/ lucky draw winning messages, friends seeking OTP for WhatsApp and messages asking you to clear electricity bills.

Fraudsters have recently been found to be sending a text SMS or a WhatsApp message to users, promising them job opportunities. The messages tell people that they have a job opportunity waiting for them, usually mentioning the pay as well, further giving a number to the users where they can send a WhatsApp message to claim the opportunity.

Users also get messages on WhatsApp, via SMS, or even on their email promising a cash prize. Again, there are different variations of these kind of fraudulent messages, like showing the cash prize as part of a “KBC Jio” lucky draw, or just simply promising people a massive cash prize, in hopes of getting them to click the fraudulent links.

A WhatsApp scam that also became hugely popular last year involves one of the users' contact asking for a six-digit code from WhatsApp. The scammers ask users to send a code that they may have received via SMS. Sending this ahead will lock them out of their WhatsApp since this code is WhatsApp’s confirmation code that it sends to users if they try to sign in from a different device.

Recently, people are receiving messages on their WhatsApp reminding them to pay their electricity bills. Here, users receive a message on their WhatsApp or via SMS that contains a reminder to pay the electricity bill, along with a number that belongs to the scammer. Now, if someone even calls the number from the message, the scammers will persuade that person to pay or they will lose their electricity connection.