A fake website which claims to give different-coloured skins for the famous messaging platform—Whatsapp has now surfaced online, and is looking to steal user identity and data.
The cybercrime may be the latest in a series of increasingly powerful and dangerous cyberattacks being witnessed across the world, the latest of them being the “WannaCry ransomware.”
The scam was first noticed by user “Yuexist”, who posted about it on social networking platform Reddit. He warned the users to open only the site https://www.whatsapp.com/.
“Users get a message saying Whatsapp is now available in different colours. ‘I love the new colours for whatsapp’. When you click the fake whatsapp.com url on your mobile, the user is made to share the link to multiple groups for human verification.” Yuexisyt said.
“Once you have done sharing, you are made to install adware apps. After you have installed the adware, the website says the Whatsapp colour is available only on Whatsapp web and makes you install an extention. This extention is an adware — a malicious software that constantly displays advertisements on your web browser,” he added.
It is strongly advised that users should not click on any of the links or try to install anything from this fake website. Doing so could put your data — from login credentials to possible whatever you send and receive — in the hands of unscrupulous persons who could misuse it in various ways.
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