WhatsApp Fraud: How Hackers get your bank details

In order to reach sensitive user data, criminals are currently sending more and more false emails on behalf of WhatsApp. The e-mails falsely claim that an annual subscription expires for the Messenger and you have to update your user account or renew your subscription. This has been on for a while and it quiets down at some point before the recent increase in the fake e-mail alert.

In fact, the use of WhatsApp is currently free. With the help of phishing mail data such as credit card or mobile numbers are stolen. Anyone who has fallen for the net and has given bank details should inform his or her bank and report the security breach.

It’s not the first time that scammers are trying to get sensitive user information via WhatsApp.

Depending on how much you are active on the Internet, you will receive more or less spam e-mails. In a relatively short time, we received two e-mails that looked “real” at first glance and seemed to come from the WhatsApp messenger service.

Spam mail requests payment to WhatsApp

The message is apparently clear: A WhatsApp ID with a (send number), which is not a mobile number, is about to expire or has already become invalid. One must pay “immediately, now, immediately” a certain amount, in order to save the already received and stored WhatsApp messages, otherwise these would be irretrievably deleted. So that the reader does not forget that, a link “Extend” is included in the mail.

You should not click on this link from this mail. If you do, you could end up on a website that wants to know your credit card details and suggests you a cost of 99 cents for 1 year up to 3.71 euros for 5 years. That would be moderate, but only with the credit card data could still be much higher amounts retrieved. Who guarantees who really is behind it?

WhatsApp was (almost) always free

WhatsApp has completely once announced costs at the beginning of its history and also in some cases on the Google Android or the Apple store billed . Here, prices of 99 US cents a year (about 80 euro cents) were called. Later, WhatsApp was generally declared free. This has not changed until today, even after the sale to Facebook.

The site links to the original WhatsApp terms and conditions and also explains why WhatsApp does not want to sell ads. Since the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook, it is a foregone conclusion that WhatsApp would soon like to make its customers happy with advertising. Since the demand for an ad-free and paid WhatsApp has already surfaced. But: So far, there are no statements yet. And probably a payment model would not fit Facebook’s business model. Paying customers who do not want to advertise certainly do not spend as much money as “matching” ads that you can show your customers. And a cost-covering WhatsApp, which would then give up advertising,

Spam emails are recognizable

Such spam emails can easily be recognized as strange. The domain of the sender does not even match the sender from whom it should come (here WhatsApp). The website to be called does not really fit either. Further features: The emails are often written in bad German or with striking grammatical errors. These are usually strong indications that something is “lazy”.

By the way: WhatsApp requires at the first registration only one phone number, which is also available. For an e-mail address is not asked. So where did you get this address from? Ok, from Facebook, but did the spam mail also go to the address given on Facebook? It may be useful to set up a “private” email address for Facebook or similar offers, which is nevertheless queried regularly because there can be quite important messages (eg on account security).

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