In several parts of the world, Whatsapp is playing an important role in the daily life of smartphone users. Since the moment that communication between phones users have shifted away from basic texts with a maximum of tokens, it is hard to imagine a world in which you are not able to communicate with your family or friends through Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, We Chat or any other chat application.
However, as comes with almost any type of digitalisation, with Whatsapp also fraud comes into play. When focussing on the Netherlands, the reports of Whatsapp fraud have increased significantly over the past years. During the corona pandemic, this has increased even more. As people stay more at home, especially during the lockdown, criminals feel the necessity to look for new crime opportunities that could be done at home.
The Dutch police estimates the loot of Whatsapp-fraud to be around one million euro per week. Every week, around 700 activities of fraud are reported. According to the Dutch police, the most common type of Whatsapp fraud is called friend-in-need fraud. The victim then receives an urgent message from a friend or family member (often a son or daughter), asking for money to be received on a short term. This happened to my own mother as well, a couple of weeks ago. She called me to verify if my sister had changed her phone number, since she was receiving messages of her via a different number than usual.
In some cases even the entire phone number is hacked and the hackers can just send a message from the original number, including the entire message history between the child and parent. This makes it even harder for parents to detect the fraud. Online criminals are getting better and better in playing this game.
In addition, these online criminals make use of the information we share on social media. They investigate your profiles; your friends, where you live, how close you are to your family, your way of communicating etc. This makes it easier for them to articulate a message that seems to be sent by you in order for your family or friends to not get suspicious.
This also leads to the subject of what to post on social media, and on how to set your privacy settings. A lot of teenagers seem to care not that much about their privacy on the internet. However, it might happen that your parents end up losing a significant amount of money because the criminals could imitate your behaviour closely by taking a look at your social media. I think it is very important for the youngest generation, for whom social media is an even bigger part of their lives than for our generation, to be aware of the possible consequences of projecting your entire life on the internet. What do you think is the best way to prevent Whatsapp fraud?
References:
https://nos.nl/artikel/2335228-vaker-whatsapp-fraude-je-denkt-dit-overkomt-mij-niet.html
https://www.politie.nl/themas/whatsappfraude-vriend-in-noodfraude.html
https://www.crimesite.nl/buit-whatsapp-fraude-een-miljoen-euro-per-week-video/
https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5171335/fraude-whatsapp-cybercrime-oplichting-zakkenrollerij-politie
Hi Emma, I enjoyed reading your blog!
Indeed, WhatsApp scams have already been around for some time. However, I would say the current COVID-19 situation made things even worse as people spend more time on their phones/apps and because of the increased reliance on online communication. Also as a side note: scammers are now using another method, which is sending messages claiming to be from WhatsApp itself. Of course WhatsApp does not send you any messages directly, but it is still important to be cautious by enabling the two-step verification.