I got an obvious catfishing text yesterday (“what’s up?” from a random number). I figured I’d string them along for a bit to see what happens. At some point, “Monica” started getting pretty insistent that we switch to Telegram. I said I don’t use it, so “she” insisted on WhatsApp. “Just go to the app store and download it!” “If you don’t download Telegram or WhatsApp, I don’t think we can talk anymore.” Stuff like that.
Why the insistence on switching? Do those apps give away your real name or leak other personal information? Or, is it that they are harder for the authorities to trace if the scammer manages to steal something from me? Or, is it something else?
I believe you can also send money through Telegram and WhatsApp. Probably smoother for them to get you to send them money through the app you’re already messaging in vs. trying to get you to Venmo them.
Whatsapp and Telegram also have web companion apps (and you can have a number of them logged into the same account), which makes it very much more convenient for an organised call-centre type scam operation to catfish the victim.
Also… Telegram in particular allows the scammer to delete the conversation at both ends - it vanishes from the view of the victim, not that there’s any realistic chance of recovering lost funds from this sort of scammer, but I imagine they like being able to cover their tracks
WhatsApp also has a variation of this feature. You can delete posts from both ends within an hour. The receiver still sees a message indicating a post was deleted though, so there is some indication a message was sent.
Not very sure - Telegram and Whatsapp are linked to your phone number, so by chatting with a scammer, you may at least be confirming that you are a ‘live’ number. I don’t know of any way that they could (for example) forcibly take control of your device without action on your part; probably the biggest risk is that it’s a means for them to get clickable links in front of you (which could go to malware, IP grabbers etc)
OK, thanks. I was already texting with them on SMS, so they know it’s a live number, but I’ll just stop now. I’m not that desperate to figure out what they try to get me to do.
The “wrong number” opening is usually the setup to a pig butchering scam, where they will spend days, weeks, months, or even longer trying to build a trusting relationship before offering you friendly “investing tips” and having you send money to a fraudulent “investing” website.
I had one approach me on Facebook last May. Same deal: they were insisting that I switch from Facebook’s chat interface to some other one, which I don’t remember, until I blocked 'em.
Maybe, but it always seems to be a woman from Japan who happens to be working in the US. A couple of times, they sent a picture (an innocent one), and two different scammers sent the same one.
Yeah, there’s a lot of commonality - they literally have scripts that are shared around or sold between them, so you see the same thing a lot. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, r/scams is a wealth of information and real-world examples.
The scammers don’t even need the victim to chat with them to know if the number is active. In WhatsApp default settings the sender of a message can see if a) the message has been received and b) the message has been read.