just one of them public service announcement sort of updates, look you see. no idea why i feel compelled to do them as i am sure there are better sources of info than me, but here you are and so here it is.
earlier this week i got a quite excited message. it assured me that my "subscription" to WhatsApp, the quasi popular messenger application for phones, was about to run out or end. it provided me with a link to click on whereby i might pay 99p for a "lifetime" subscription.
to be clear at the start, this WhatsApp subscription expired message is a scam and a hoax, perpetrated by those more despicable criminal types on the web. there's a new story here about it if you so wish to read. if you get or have got this message delete immediately. should you have fallen for it then contact your bank as soon as possible, should you have handed over any details.
right, let's have a look at what came to me - edited down a bit so as not to reveal too much info, or to give you the link they scammers are using. yes, let me rather remove that curiosity temptation from your keyboard, to be sure.
quite a little bit clever it is, as you can see. i am quite lazy and so never deleted an old message i got what was genuinely from WhatsApp asking me to verify my new phone. this scam message, the second text above, was somehow sent in such a way that my phone recognized the ID as being the official WhatsApp message channel. pretty scary that these scammers can do that.
no one is quite sure how the scammers have got all the numbers of people using WhatsApp to send this out. i don't think there is anything so intelligent as that. my (considerably) better half has a telephone number quite close to mine numerically and she got the same message within seconds of me. i suspect these scammers - or if you like sh!tbag criminals - are just using machines to generate tens of thousands of sequential numbers that follow the pattern of mobile phones and are sending away in bulk.
when you take the time to look at the text it is clearly a scam. for a start there's no actual mention of WhatsApp in it. the link is also clearly nothing to do with them. and the presentation of the required fee, 99p, is not in a standard format for us here in the UK.
my guess would be that if you clicked on the link they gave you would be taken to a fancy, pretty looking site and encouraged to hand over personal details and bank account numbers. please don't do it.
anyway, hope this has been of help to anyone who got this message or similar and has wisely decided to double check and research before taking any actions. and to be clear once more, the only action you should take involves your delete button.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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