Beware of the “random contacts” from China on WhatsApp
Many WhatsApp users are currently being contacted “by chance” by alleged women from China. However, there is a scam scam behind this.
We reported on this scam back in June (see HERE): An alleged old friend moved to China and wants to move back to Germany. The text has now changed, because recently the alleged women from China accidentally wrote a wrong number.
This is what such a contact looks like, for example:
The attractive lady from China, who allegedly wanted to write to a tour guide named Steve from Bavaria, doesn’t want to talk on WhatsApp for a long time, but should contact her on Telegram.
There she actually has a profile – but with photos of a Chinese actress:
What’s behind this scam?
The possibilities for fraudsters are manifold, the most obvious is the so-called “romance scamming”, in which the users are simulated that they are really in love and after a while they are asked for smaller, then larger sums of money in order to allegedly pay for the moving costs, the flight and administrative costs to be able to.
The fraudsters are very clever: they never ask for money straight away, instead an apparent relationship of trust is built up over weeks and months until one believes that one has actually found the great love for which one naturally plunders the account in order to have it with to have.
In no case react!
Fraudsters usually come through leaked databases or simply by automatically sending randomly generated numbers to WhatsApp users.
A response confirms to the scammers that the number exists and is active, which reveals many possibilities.
For example, the now confirmed number can be used for ping calls (the doorbell only rings once, the user calls back out of curiosity and ends up on an expensive, chargeable announcement), spam calls about allegedly won competitions or the sending of harmful links is now possible possible.
Conclusion
It’s actually very simple: If you don’t know a person, you shouldn’t react, and in the above cases it’s best to report to WhatsApp and block it.
The scam is also carried out in other countries, for example “The Independent” (see HERE) reports that users in Singapore were contacted with exactly the same text, only the pictures of the women vary.
