A NEW warning has been issued about a WhatsApp scam that sees cyber criminals pose as family members to steal your money.
Suffolk Trading Standards in the UK has had to issue the warning after a mother from the area received a scam WhatsApp message claiming to be her daughter.
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According to the East Anglian Daily Times, a woman from Kessingland, near Lowestoft, received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number.
The unknown number claimed to her daughter.
Her ‘daughter’ claimed to have dropped her phone down the toilet and needed a new number.
Scammers often use elaborate excuses like this to try and impersonate someone.
The fake daughter then said she needed to borrow money to pay a bill because ‘she’ couldn’t access her account.
The scammer asked for £1,980.
Fortunately, the mother did not fall for the scam.
She contacted her daughter via her partner and confirmed the messages were a scam.
If you receive a suspicious message from someone you know you should always ring the person to check it’s actually them or verify their identity through other means.
A spokeswoman for Suffolk Trading Standards said: “If you receive a suspicious message (even if you think you know who it’s from), calling or requesting a voice note is the fastest and simplest way to check someone is who they say they are.”
One man lost £1,500 to the scam
A 75-year-old man recently told The Sun of his anger after scammers on WhatsApp fooled him into sending them hundreds of pounds.
Hoodwinked retiree John (not his real name) lost £1,500 to cunning cyber crooks posing as his granddaughter on the popular messaging service.
Fortunately, his bank agreed to refund him the money after being contacted by The Sun.
“[Losing the money] wouldn’t have ruined Christmas,” said John, “but it would have been severely curtailed as we are not a rich family.”
He considers himself pretty scam-savvy and had never fallen for one before.
This one was particularly convincing, however, because the conman knew his granddaughter’s name and was able to WhatsApp his son’s work phone – the number for which is strictly only shared with colleagues and close family.
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In other news, a new Instagram hoax is trying to steal logins by faking a “copyright violation”.
Scammers are using Google Alerts to send out links to malware.
Video chat app Zoom will offer free and paying users end-to-end encryption.
And, Windows 10 users are being told to update their PC to escape an ‘Eternal Darkness’ flaw.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
