Whatsapp Phishing Scam

garc9999

Anyone know anything about this new Whatsapp scam where you get a message about a free €150 ALDI voucher if you click the link. My mum just fell for it but only did a quick Yes/No survey. Didn't give over any personal info or anything. Should I be looking on her phone for any malicious apps???

guy83

Your Mum needs to keep an eye out for any follow-up messages telling her that she has registered for a competition/draw. This is the scam where they charge an extortionate amount for sending you text messages under the pretence of entering you in a prize draw.
The only step I know of to get out of this is to

1) note down the number from which the message was received
2) exit the message
3) create a new message and enter the number noted in step 1
4) enter STOP - one word, all caps
5) send the message

This advice came from Vodafone support regarding a similar scam. I don't know why it is important to start with a fresh message rather than just reply to the received message.

Also if your Mum receives a message you can use the number it was sent from to identify the "provider" (i.e. scammer) and contact them by email directly to demand to be removed from the competition. This should mean no further expensive text messages. People report different degrees of success with getting refunds from charges already applied through these scams by persevering. The first thing though is to prevent further messages as they will continue and can run up substantial charges.

garc9999

Thanks Guy,

Really appreciate the info. For once, google didn't throw up anything of use! Seems like this Whatsapp scam is fairly hot at the moment. It's popped up on most of the major news site over the past few hours.

It's pretty common, I got a text a few weeks ago from a friend with a link to an Argos voucher except the g had a dot above it so the domain wasn't registered to Argos at all.

I followed the labyrinth of javascript to see what they're doing. Basically they just check your location and language (in the version I researched a few weeks ago) and serve you a questionnaire as guy83 describes. They then request you to pass the link to a number of your friends in order to be entered in the draw. At no time was malware served in my case, they also requested to view a youtube video, which I'm guessing was to generate more income for them or something (I never actually looked at the video).

Super Drogs

Thanks for the info lads. My Mam fell for it too and filled out the survey!

magentis

just wondering is the €125 tesco voucher ad I'm seeing on this site related?

Esel

Read about a few other big companies' vouchers being 'offered'.

kkontour

The domain hosting the voucher used what looked like

http://www.aldi.com

but the letter d has a dot under it
ḍ
Hard to notice, especially on the phone

spaceHopper

Tell me, what happens if you are charged, contact your provider and say that charge is from a scam if you pass it over you are laundering money for criminals..?

Saw it on tv years ago in the dial up days, a virus changes your dial up settings to a premium number but still gives you internet, when the bill arrives you get a shock. People got on to the BBC Watch Dog program, BT were having none of it till they wrote to them saying, this is a criminal act, you are laundering money.... BT suddenly had a change of heart. One poor Vicar had a big bill, wonder what doggie sites he was looking at to get infected.