WhatsApp scam calls back to haunt Indian users, this time from US

WhatsApp users in India on Saturday witnessed a new wave of scam where cyber-criminals started calling people on the platform from fake US numbers

New Delhi: WhatsApp users in India on Saturday witnessed a new wave of scam where cyber-criminals started calling people on the platform from fake US numbers, pretending to be their senior office executives and colleagues, thus trying to give their modus operandi a new level of authenticity.

People working for a leading media company in the Capital, and even those who have quit the organisation, received numerous such fake international calls — this time from US-based fake phone numbers — from top executives, asking them to start conversation. “Please get back to me as soon as you get my text, thanks,” read such messages, when names of the top executives.

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This time, the international WhatsApp fake calls started with +1 (404) which is the calling code of Atlanta, Georgia, +1 (773) which is the code of Chicago, Illinois, and more. In May this year, millions of WhatsApp users in India were left baffled at the amount of international spam calls they received, leaving many at the risk of financial and personal loss.

These spam calls with international numbers, mostly from African and Southeast Asian countries, along with fake messages from unknown users, flooded WhatsApp and Indians had nowhere to go. Meta-owned WhatsApp has close to 500 million users in India. Although the mobile numbers showed country codes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Ethiopia, it is not necessary that these calls are actually coming from these countries.

Most of these calls started with +251 (Ethiopia), +62 (Indonesia), +254 (Kenya), +84 (Vietnam) and other countries. Another scam that is still being reported in India is that of receiving job offers via WhatsApp messages.