Viral Now - WhatsApp Scams and Tips to avoid them

WhatsApp with billions of users and daily millions of downloads is free for everyone and all the rumours and scams that have been spread were fake. WhatsApp users shouldn’t believe messages, that tell them that WhatsApp is not free. These are nothing but a scam.

There are messages circulating which say that WhatsApp is going to shut down or that they are going to charge, but if you forward the message to all your contacts then your username will be registered. Some of these messages say that WhatsApp will charge you a fee of 25 dollars, they say that if you want it to be free, you should try to become a frequent WhatsAPP user and you can do this only by sending the message to 10 people and having frequent chats with 10 people.

If you get all such hoax messages then don’t believe them. It is evident in the messages themselves that the messages are fake! You should keep in mind that WhatsAPP users get registered for the application using their phone number and not their user name unlike with Facebook messenger.

How to tell if a message or an app is a scam

You can find out if it’s a scam if you read the message very carefully. You should never fall prey to any such forwarded messages and not react to them. Those messages are meant to harm the image of the company and one should not believe them.

Now moving on to some other types of scams under the name of WhatsAPP: recently you might have come across this new application named “WhatsAPPgold” in your play store and thought that this is the better and new version of WhatsAPP for niche user’s. This new app is nothing but a scam using WhatsAPP as the name for the application to draw attention is one of the most common techniques such scams use!

Claiming it to be an exclusive version of WhatsAPP they got a large number of users in their net. All these messages and applications associated with the name of WhatsApp are not real but fake. These applications pretend to be the better and exclusive versions of WhatsAPP and try to get a big audience using the brand name of the already established messenger “WhatsAPP”.

Avoid Downloading Suspicious Applications

All users must be completely aware that WhatsAPP will never launch any better version of the application without making an official announcement. All these applications can be risky to get registered with as well as to share any media files over these applications as they are not even authenticated. Downloading and getting registered to these applications will be a risk of privacy to the users because who knows where all the data of your important conversations is stored. It can even be misused. So try to download music and other files from trusted source. Here is a great mp3 music downloader, you can use this to download music for your android phones.

Everyone of us should be aware of WhatsAPP plus, too! WhatsAPP plus was never an improvised version of WhatsAPP, but it was a third party client which pretended to be the better version. WhatsAPP even banned users for around 24 hours from using the application on any of their gadgets and filed a case against What’sAPP plus for violating the terms and conditions of the third party client.

Many of the WhatsAPP users uninstalled WhatsAPP and started using WhatsAPP plus. But WhatsApp plus is illegal, and all such applications and messages should be avoided at all costs.

WhatsApp viruses and traps

If you ever got a message on your phone which said that you have a missed call on WhatsAPP and a link is given below to know who called you, never click on the link because it may bring a virus to your phone. A person should know that WhatsAPP will never contact a user using any other source than WhatsAPP. You should be aware that these links and messages are nothing but hoax.

In case that you click on these links, you may even end up damaging your phone. Alertness is the only key to be aware and avoid such hoax messages.

There are many messages been forward mainly known as Chain messages which are been claimed to be sent by the CEO of WhatsAPP to inform the users about the recent updates and changes WhatsAPP will come up with in the near future. Please be aware that no CEO will ever use this medium to contact their customers or users to inform anything about their company.

Do not forward any such chain messages to anyone. It is nothing but hoax messages. There are even incidences that the name of the CEO mentioned in the message you are forwarding is not even real. Many do not know but the real founders of WhatsAPP are Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Even they will never choose to communicate anything via messages.

Official announcements will be made if any new application will be launched by WhatsAPP and if any new update will be coming or even if WhatsAPP will ever in any circumstance become chargeable. A user should know that if there is no official announcement made on television channels by the company heads, then it is nothing but a hoax and you should not fall into the trap.

Featured photo credit: Josh Felise via unsplash.com

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