Cyber criminals have generated a WhatsApp scam capable of stealing all the money of Italian Unicredit currents, here's how they act and how to defend yourself
Scams related to current accounts and BancoPosta accounts are very frequent on WhatsApp. Exploiting social engineering techniques, hackers contact users to push them to enter their bank details and steal all their money. Recently, exploiting the powerful means of WhatsApp, hackers have targeted Unicredit checking accounts.
Banking scams have been on the rise in recent years, especially on WhatsApp, for several reasons. First of all, it costs very little to generate them, there is no need for special sophisticated viruses to hit users, it is enough to engineer the best deceptive message that pushes people to enter their home banking login credentials, or credit card data. Moreover, thanks to a round of transfers to different accounts, it is difficult to trace the group of cyber criminals behind this kind of attacks. In addition to WhatsApp, hackers also use email messages a lot, where they pretend to be the assistance of our bank. And in the last period, banking scams via SMS are also back in fashion. Those who have an account, therefore, must be careful at all times not to fall into such a trap.
How to defend yourself from Unicredit WhatsApp scam
Specifically, the scam for Unicredit account holders on WhatsApp is developed in this way: hackers contact the victim with a private message where they warn the user that their account, due to a bureaucratic change, must be updated, otherwise it will be closed. Obviously it's a scam: the cybercriminal just wants to get us to click on the link in the text to redirect us to a page that is similar to the Unicredit one but that is not the official website of the bank. Once we enter our login credentials on the fake Unicredit website, we give the hacker the information he needs to steal all our money.
So what can we do to protect our savings? Simple, first we must remember that banks, including Unicredit, will never notify us of a change in our current account via WhatsApp. If we have problems with our credit card we will be notified directly by the bank via telephone and we will never be asked for username or password, or card details, unless directly at the bank counter. Secondly, we must always remember when we come from ambiguous messages about our current account to call our bank before doing any operation. If we receive a message on WhatsApp, via SMS and email, related to our account before clicking on links or downloading attachments let's first make a call to Unicredit customer service, or another bank if we have an account opened elsewhere. Finally, remember to never enter our home banking credentials if not on the official website of our bank.