I semi-regular get stuff like “hi mom, here is my new number.” (I’m a dad).
I always reply with “finally! Now you can pay me back for dad’s birthday present. Here’s the link for the payment.”
That always seems to shut them up.
Doing a reverse image search can be amusing. Sometimes you run across women whose likenesses have been used by scammers so many times that they’ve entered meme territory.
Haha! I’ll try that next time.
There’s been a rash of scammers on YouTube pretending to be the channel owner and offering them a “prize” which of course requires shipping and handling fees.
They want the victims to switch to Telegram in order to carry out the transaction. With Telegram, once you send the money it’s gone. No way to claw it back. That’s a big plus for scammers.
Not sure of WhatsApp’s payment system.
There’s no payment system on WhatsApp I’m aware of.
The timing of this thread is surreal, since I have just met with a new client who is accused of having unlawful content on his phone.
He claims (I don’t know if what he says is true, and I haven’t seen the evidence) that it started with the sort of messaging referenced in the OP, followed by requests for money, and eventually blackmail and unsolicited downloads. Even basic conversations are likely efforts to gather information about you.
I’d be wary of any kind of interaction with these people.
He thinks that these messages derive from outside the United States, so the request for a different app may stem from what is available to them or what best facilitates the sending of money.
How does that work with these apps? Is it just that the image is in a message? Can they send files otherwise without your acquiescence?
I know decades ago (time flies!) there stories about issues with some online chats that allowed other users to file-transfer stuff to (and from) your computer sometimes unknown to the recipient, resulting in accusations of inappropriate images and also convenient ways for some to store images away from their own computer… which became a standard defense for some when caught with it.
Yes, you can send unsolicited images (and other files) in WhatsApp chats, and if the recipient has the app configured to automatic downloads, it gets stored to your device.
Yes, but does the app store files into your device without them being part of the message? That was the problem with older chat programs (IRC?). Essentially the user could, as I understood the issue. initiate a file transfer onto the recipeint’s disk and the recipient might not be aware that was happening in parallel with regular chatting.
My experience is only with Apple and SMS texting, but any image I get is embedded in a text. Unless I’m getting snowed with texts and don’t look at them all, I can see everything that comes in. (And presumably, common sense would say “delete” for stuff that can get you 10 to 20.) Do these newer apps allow anything beyond that? can someone really say “it was stored on my phone without my knowledge” unless it happened since they last looked at their phone?
OTOH, I’ve never used Whatsapp or Telegram, no inclination to, so I don’t know what they can do…
Yes, you can transfer an image without text as a single message to a WhatsApp recipient, and it gets automatically stored to their device before they are even noticed about the new message.
ETA: it’s as easy as that: if I see an interesting image that I want to share in say, a browser or from my personal gallery, I can tap it and choose “share”, then choose the WhatsApp app and the recipient(s) from my contacts, and the image gets transferred in a fraction of a second.
ETA2: on review, I think I misunderstood your question. No, I don’t think it’s possible to send you a file without you being noticed. But if it’s illegal stuff, the damage has already been done.
I just noticed another one tried to get hold of me a couple days ago, “her” Instagram profile says “she” is a cosmetologist. Catfishers should be more careful what images they use – reverse searching three images from “her” Instagram went back to escort services!