Fraudsters have found a new way to clone WhatsApp accounts and dupe people by asking them to activate “call forwarding” on their phones, police said on Wednesday.
The police said they had received at least two complaints where fraudsters convinced the complainants to activate call forwarding and subsequently took control of their WhatsApp before sending messages to people on their contact lists asking for money.
“Once someone gets control of another person’s WhatsApp, they can seek financial help from people on the victim’s contact list,” said an officer in Lalbazar.
In at least one case, a woman was duped of Rs 11,000 when she transferred the money to a fraudulent account thinking she was sending it to a friend.
Deputy commissioner (cyber crime) Praween Prakash said the fraud starts with a phone call from a person who pretends to be a representative of a telecom service operator.
“The fraudster asks the target to dial a combination of short codes and numbers followed by a specific mobile number. This forwards the call to another number,” Prakash said. This means any call made to this number would now land up on the fraudster’s phone.
Once the call forwarding facility is activated on the victim’s phone, the fraudster would install WhatsApp on his phone using the victim’s mobile number. An OTP is needed for the transfer of the victim’s WhatsApp account. The fraudster chooses to generate the OTP through voice call instead of a text message. Since call forwarding is already activated, the fraudster gets the code to access the victim’s WhatsApp account, an officer said.