New Delhi, Jan 21 (PTI) A police think tank functioning under the Union Home Ministry has issued advisories and warnings against various scams perpetrated on popular social media messaging platform WhatsApp leading to cyber crimes and financial scams.
The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) has identified seven types of fraud, including deception, impersonation, hijacking and screen sharing through missed calls and video calls in the name of job offers or investment schemes.
As part of a “hijack” scam, scammers gain unauthorized access to victims’ WhatsApp (WA) accounts and demand money from their contacts, according to the eight-page advisory and warning.
“Some people also witnessed WhatsApp video calls from unknown numbers. These were basically sextortion-based nude video calls, which were then used to blackmail users.” The communication obtained by PTI In a statement, BPRD said, “Hackers are blackmailing users and demanding money in return.”
BPRD is a think tank on police issues under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
WhatsApp, for its part, recently launched several public message campaigns to educate the public about the safety features brought by the platform, which is owned by tech giant Meta.
According to BPRD, through missed calls from numbers starting with country codes mainly belonging to Vietnam, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malaysia, hackers use “code script bots” to find active users and target them to various cyber threats. They are said to be targeting them.
As part of an identity theft scam, fraudsters impersonate an organization’s CEO or senior executive and contact victims, including CFO (Chief Financial Officer), COO (Chief Operating Officer), CTO (Chief Technology Officer), CTO ( Target executives such as Chief Technology Officers. They are said to be police and government officials.
Fraudsters obtain the personal details of the impersonated officials by surfing social media handles, create similar profiles, and convince victims that they are attending important meetings or old phones. They ask for immediate payment for some links, citing problems with the number. BPRD said the funds needed to be transferred.
In the warning, it also published photos of several WA accounts where such attempts were made.
The communication specifically expressed concerns about WhatsApp’s recently released “screen sharing” feature.
BPRD stated, “In the past, we have witnessed many scams in which fraudsters illegally access victims’ screens to carry out illegal activities.”
In addition, scammers impersonate officials from banks, financial institutions, government agencies, etc., and once they convince victims to share their screen, malicious apps and software are “secretly” installed and victims can access their bank account details. It added that it steals sensitive information such as passwords, passwords, etc. Banking services are compromised.
The communication asks users to enable “two-factor authentication (2FA)” on their WA accounts as part of the do’s and don’ts, while also not answering suspicious or unknown WA calls. It was also proposed to report and block phone numbers that approach users.
“Stakeholders at the messaging app WhatsApp have already been notified of this data breach. A number of government agencies and ministries are already working on this issue and have not formally contacted the relevant authorities on similar matters. “As a precautionary measure, unknown communications on WhatsApp that do not verify their authenticity should be avoided.Nonetheless, no adequate solution to such problems is recognized yet.” P.T.I.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by federal officials and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)