In recent months, WhatsApp scam attempts have become popular in which cyber criminals tried to take control of users’ accounts in the instant messaging app by tricking them into sending them their verification code.
WhatsApp will improve its systems to prevent account impersonation
The procedure was simple: the user is contacted with any excuse by the cyber criminal, who tells him that, in order to recover his WhatsApp account, he needs to confirm what his verification code is. However, what the user communicates is not the code of the person who contacts him, but rather his own -although he does not know it- and by exposing it, he leaves the door open for his WhatsApp account to be stolen.
WhatsApp account is accessed?
To avoid this type of practice, WhatsApp is working on the development of a new tool that will prevent it from being so “easy” to impersonate users. Until now, if a WhatsApp account is accessed from a device other than the usual one, the company sends a security code to avoid cyber attacks (precisely, the one that cyber criminals claim and with which they carry out the impersonation if they deceive the user and are able to to get hold of him).
However, when the new security update prepared by WhatsApp is definitively launched, users will receive not only one numerical code, but two. Thus, by sending that second verification code to the main device, the user would be more aware when someone accesses their account from another device (something that can happen given that WhatsApp has already allowed multi-device access for a few months).
With this novelty, which was discovered by WABetaInfo when analyzing the WhatsApp beta version code, the user of the main device would receive up to two notices before someone could access their account from another device. This would allow you to make sure that it is a fraudulent access attempt and that your account is trying to be compromised.
Of course, at the moment it is only known that WhatsApp works on this functionality thanks to the analysis of the source code of the beta version. At the moment, WhatsApp has not confirmed when the update will be available for the more than 2,000 million users who have the messaging app installed around the world.
