In a new crime advisory on its Facebook page, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) is warning about a resurgence of scams involving bad actors trying to take over other people's WhatsApp accounts.
According to the post, such scams typically start with the victim receiving a WhatsApp message (from a contact whose WhatsApp account has already been compromised) that asks them to reply with the six-digit verification code sent to the phone.
If this code is provided, the victim would subsequently lose access to his or her own WhatsApp account.
SPF offers a few tips that can help to prevent this from happening, and the most obvious one is to not share your verification codes with anyone, even if the request message seems to come from a close friend or family member.
Remember: always verify with the sender first.
Additionally, anyone using WhatsApp should really turn on two-step verification, which is off by default.
The WhatsApp FAQ page has the steps on how to do this, but as a quick summary, you can find the option in the WhatsApp app, under Settings > Account > Two-step verification.
Because you can't have the same WhatsApp account active on more than one phone at the same time, in the event your account is compromised, what you need to do quickly is to sign back in and verify with the six-digit PIN to log out the scammer.
This article was first published on Hardware Zone