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Hi from Argentina! Yesterday someone tried to hack my WhatsApp. He call me and said something like: > Hello! I'm from phone company $Name. Someone tried to re
by gus_massa 2y ago
Hi from Argentina!
Yesterday someone tried to hack my WhatsApp. He call me and said something like:
> Hello! I'm from phone company $Name. Someone tried to register your WhatsApp number form $Another_city. We are calling to confirm because otherwise we will have to block your phone line with $Name.
The first problem was that $Name was not my phone company. I though it was a "change company" call that is worse than a scam because it's real and is done by the phone companies. They even let children accept the company change. So I said that I didn't authorize any change to anything. He replied that:
> You are in WhatsApp group $Something and if you don't confirm we will have to block your phone line with $Name.
Weird pause because I was in group $Something! And he continued:
> We will send you now an SMS with a code to confirm your identity, because if we don't get the confirmation we will have to block your phone line with $Name.
I hang up.
I got a SMS from WhatsApp with a secret number to install WhatsApp in a new device, that explicitly says that I should not share the number with anyone.
They probably hacked the account of other member of group $Something. The main plan is to send money request to other persons in the group. Our bank system is quite modern and everyone has in their phone an app from the bank to transfer money instantly for free. (I have not seen a dead-tree check in decades.)
So today I have zero sympathy for scammers. Moreover, I think the employees of the call centers of the real companies here have worse working conditions than the scammer here. And neither of them are in almost slavery conditions.
(From time to time we have police investigations of slavery conditions but mostly for forced prostitution and ilegal cloth factories. It's a real problem but not in the scammer area.)
- willvarfar 2y ago(Last month there was a crackdown that freed over 7000 call centre slaves in Myanmar. In that operation those freed actually ended up in a kind of captive holding situation https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/southeast-asia/myanmar-scam-centres-detention-forced-labour-b2711716.html https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/southeast-asia/myanmar-sc... The article mentions that the call centres in Myanmar were targeting Chinese and Americans, so although the call centers are very far away the people they are scamming might be a lot closer. Its a very international problem.)
- chatmasta 2y agoDepending on group privacy, they may be able to identify members without joining it (i.e. no need to hack someone else in the group). I haven’t kept up on WhatsApp research but at some point this was true - same goes for online status and avatars. I have those set to “nobody” and “default.” WhatsApp makes it way too easy to go from “phone number” to “real person online at X, Y, Z hours.”