A woman was going about her day when she noticed suddenly that her WhatsApp had stopped working. She tried restarting her phone, but to no avail. Soon after, her husband started receiving calls from her contacts, asking why she was requesting money.Confused, she checked her phone again. It wasn’t just WhatsApp – she couldn’t make or receive calls either. Worried, her husband contacted the cybercrime branch, where they discovered that her WhatsApp had been hacked through call forwarding.She then recalled a call she had received earlier from a person posing as a delivery agent. The caller claimed he got a parcel for her and asked for her address. Thinking her children might have ordered something, she shared the details without suspicion. The caller then asked her to dial a number, saying it was for delivery confirmation. Without much thought, she did.Unknowingly, she had entered a call-forwarding code. This redirected all her calls to another number, allowing fraudsters to hijack her WhatsApp and use it to scam her contacts.This was not an isolated case. In another incident, a man was tricked by fraudsters posing as a friend. They registered WhatsApp using his number and messaged him, claiming they had mistakenly sent an OTP and lost it. Busy with travel, he forwarded the OTP without caring to give a second thought. Soon after, his WhatsApp stopped working, and scammers used his account to request money from his contacts. Cybercrime officials explain that fraudsters often trick people into dialling a call-forwarding code starting with *#, which redirects their calls. This allows scammers to verify the number and register WhatsApp on their own devices.Another common method involves persuading victims to share their OTP, giving fraudsters direct access to their WhatsApp accounts. Scammers also use phishing links to install third-party apps, such as APK messenger forwarders, on victims’ phones. These apps forward messages to the scammer’s number, letting them intercept WhatsApp verification messages and take control of the account.
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