Overview
- The government launched a national awareness campaign on Monday after the Fraudehelpdesk logged dozens of reports of accounts taken over and messages auto-forwarded from victims.
- Criminals send a trusted contact’s message that links to a fake site, ask the recipient to enter their phone number, and show a verification code that, if entered, approves a new linked device.
- The technique, called ghost pairing, uses WhatsApp’s Linked Devices feature so attackers can read messages and send posts from the victim’s account without breaking end‑to‑end encryption.
- Victims describe rapid mass‑forwarding from their accounts and services blocking sending for about 24 hours, and attackers can impersonate contacts to ask others for money or spread the scam further.
- Police and fraud centres advise taking three seconds before clicking, calling the sender on another channel to confirm, immediately logging out unknown devices in WhatsApp’s Linked Devices, enabling two‑step verification, and reporting incidents to Fraudehelpdesk or police.