The Kolkata Police cyber cell has issued an important advisory for WhatsApp users. The advisory was issued after the cyber cell received complaints from a student and businessman in the city. Reportedly, this cyber fraud initiated with impersonation on Facebook. The cybercriminals appear to have hacked victims\u2019 Facebook profiles and then contacted people on their friend\u2019s list through Messenger. Reports further stated that in these cases scammers tried to dupe users’ contact on the pretext of running yoga classes. The city reportedly witnessed several such scams around the World Yoga Day celebrated on June 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How the fraudsters hacked WhatsApp account <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as reports are concerned, the fraudsters contacted people in the victims contact list asking them to join yoga classes being conducted by them. Following, a link is sent and the recipient is also naked to click. After clicking the link, the contacts are asked to share a six digit OTP code. Soon after, the link is clicked and the OTP is shared, the accused can use the WhatsApp number from another phone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The aforementioned OTP is actually a WhatsApp verification code. Reportedly, WhatsApp accounts are linked to one phone number on one device. When hackers try to link them on to their own, they try to get it done through a verification code. Once netizens share this code with fraudsters, users lose access to their WhatsApp account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What cyber criminals do with hacked WhatsApp account<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n After the WhatsApp account is hacked, the criminals impersonate the victim, request money from their contacts. Furthermore, they can also use the hacked account for criminal activities. In most cases, investigators mentioned that the accused then extorted their victims to invest in crypto-currency to get back access to their WhatsApp account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, in a Facebook post, the Kolkata Police warned that WhatsApp is getting hacked. The Police further advised netizens not to forward OTP or any details if they receive any such kind of messages. The police also shared a screenshot of the fraud message where a WhatsApp code apparently is asked to be shared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the WhatsApp account is hacked, the criminals impersonate the victim, request money from their contacts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":482123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[98870],"tags":[159698,159697],"yst_prominent_words":[9586,34735,4337,4326,8993,46901,65187,34760,4000,5656,4813],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/07\/25122825\/whatsapp.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482118"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=482118"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=482118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}