Unscrupulous individuals always try to find ways to deceive us to find ways to hijack our social media accounts, including WhatsApp. Now that we can link our WhatsApp account to up to four computers, hackers have found a way to trick us into giving hackers access to our WhatsApp account, and I fell for it for less than a minute.
After a fortnight of not using the PC, I tried to access my WhatsApp on my wife's laptop. The browser's tab for WhatsApp had been closed. So, I typed “WhatsApp” in the browser to search for the link.
Several links popped up, and I automatically selected the first search result. The website was in Chinese; I absentmindedly attributed that to the laptop's language setting. I whipped out my handphone and scanned the QR code to reestablish the link.
The website showed little reaction. I thought the connection had failed and tried rescanning the QR code. But deep behind the recesses of where my brain is left idling, a brain cell probably woke up and started kicking around. I looked at my phone and saw that I was linked to two devices, one of them running on a MAC OS. My eyes caught the address on the webpage. It was not the normal WhatsApp address.
I quickly removed access to both links, never mind that I knew one of the devices was genuine. Once I had removed both links, I rechecked my WhatsApp search results. What I had clicked was an ad placed by the scammer or scammers. Had I not removed the links, the scammer/scammers would have full access to my WhatsApp conversation, and could even use the device to either steal information or spread malicious content while using my profile.
I learned a lesson tonight. Despite always reminding others to be careful online, I still made the mistake of clicking the wrong link. And if I made that mistake, what more others? I hope that by sharing this lesson, others too get a timely reminder on this type of tricky hack.
Danny Liew is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact Newswav.