At the beginning, there was a seemingly innocent Facebook message. In the end, the gullible girl lost several hundred dollars.
At first, there was a Facebook message from her friend. According to this message, her friend had lost his mobile phone, so he asked her to share her number with him again. She did not suspect him of anything wrong, so she sent him the number immediately. However, there was a catch – it wasn’t her friend, but a scammer who was only pretending to be her friend.
A few days later, messages started arriving on her phone about pending payments, including codes to confirm transactions. Shortly afterwards, the bank debited several hundred dollars from her account. All this was repeated again later. Then, finally, the girl contacted her operator and the police did the suspicious transactions stop.
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What happened? In addition to obtaining her phone number, the hackers infected the girl’s mobile phone with a malicious virus – malware. As a result, they were able to intercept and read all the text messages she received. Including those with payment verification codes.
How does malware infect your phone?
Malware can get into your phone in two ways. Either when you download a suspicious app while agreeing to let it access your text messages, or by clicking on an infected link in a text message you receive. Most often, these are messages with alarming or curious content, or messages with information about alleged prizes.
How to protect yourself from malware?
- Don’t download suspicious apps from Google Play and don’t click any links in unknown text messages.
- Install a reliable spam blocker. Here’s how you do that.
- If you have any doubts, contact your operator.