There’s Now a Scam Whereby Scammers Hack Your Friend’s WhatsApp Account To Sell You Gold Bars

By
Zhi Hao
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Gold bars are usually seen as a luxury, a sure notion that you’ve made it in life.

But for several unlucky individuals, gold bars could come across as a little less honourable than expected.

There’s Now a Scam Whereby Scammers Hack Your Friend’s WhatsApp Account To Sell You Gold Bars

According to The Straits Times, scammers have coined a new scheme…

And it involves actual gold bars, or lack thereof anyway.

According to the news report, scammers would pose as friends of a prospective victim and introduce heavily discounted gold bars on messaging platform WhatsApp.

We’re talking real friends by the way, not those mythical good-looking people from Hong Kong.

In fact, a gold bar could be marketed at a whopping 30 per cent below the market rate. If you’re familiar with the potential value of gold, you would understand how delectably promising the deal would sound.

Scammers have a reasonable excuse for the cheap rates too. Apparently, the gold bars were previously ‘confiscated’ by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority or Singapore Customs, and are currently being auctioned off to the public.

And to make things seem more legitimate, a fake invoice by Singapore Customs will also be provided.

All in all, the base of a seemingly perfect crime.

Victims will then be instructed to make payment to a list of available bank accounts.

The schemes only come to light when they fail to get their promised gold bars, or when they realise that their friend’s WhatsApp account had been hacked.

Through Voicemail

It seems that hackers have a rather proficient way of hacking into WhatsApp accounts too.

According to the news report, the scammer would employ the following steps:

  • The scammer would attempt to log into the victim’s WhatsApp account, and fail the verification process on purpose
  • At this point, WhatsApp will ask for voice verification. If the victim ignores it or their phone is not on, the audio message will be relayed to their voicemail account
  • The scammer will use the default PIN (issued by telecoms service providers) to enter the victim’s voicemail account. This will only work, however, if the victim had not changed their PIN beforehand.
  • The scammer then procures the six-digit verification from the voicemail to access the victim’s WhatsApp account

After this, the scammer can incorporate a two-step verification process to block the victim from regaining control.

The gold bar scheme could then carry on.

Advisory

To avoid being hacked, individuals are advised to either change their voicemail account’s default PIN, turn off the voicemail function or sanction two-step verification in their WhatsApp account.

Those who receive news of such deals should also make sure to double confirm the other party’s authenticity before making any commitments.

As for those with knowledge of such incidents, they can reach out to the police hotline at 1800-255-0000 or submit info online here.

Those in urgent situations can also call 999.

Apparently, there were 15,756 scam cases in 2020, as compared to 9,545 in 2019.

E-commerce scams have also become more prevalent.

Amid these already tumultuous times, let’s all take extra precautions to avoid getting hurt.

Featured Image: Singapore Police Force

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Zhi Hao
Email: [email protected]