Watch out! New WhatsApp spam has 'Diya' asking users to 'call her'

Spam messages on WhatsApp are rising daily it would appear.  In one such case, one of our team members got a message from an unknown number, along with a business card. While the name of the contact was ‘Diya’, followed by a picture of a woman, when we checked the number on the TrueCaller app, the number belongs to a Soniya Soniya in Ivory Coast. The Diya business card has a picture of an Indian girl on it, but if you look at the number it’s definitely not an Indian one.   And it’s not just ‘Diya’ who is used to send spam messages. Another spam profile shared with us was of one Pooja. Again the contact number was from an unknown international number. Using pictures of women and sending spam links on social media is a fairly tried and tested method of ensuring chaos on the Internet. Very often gullible users tend to fall for such scams and might even go on to add such a person on WhatsApp, which is dangerous as this person could try and get personal information such as bank account details, email passwords by trying to be friends them. In fact, a report by PC Advisor had pointed out how WhatsApp users got a chain-letter hoax message after the app was acquired by Facebook. The hoax message claimed to be from one “David D. Suretech,” the alleged founder of WhatsApp. (For future reference Brian Acton and Jan Koum are the real founders of WhatsApp) The message then went on to claim that WhatsApp will start charging per inactive user and the only way to avoid it was to forward the message to ten others. Sort of like the old chain-emails of yester-years, except that these rely on the users’ fear of losing WhatsApp access. As far as users are concerned, there are many security risks when it comes to clicking on these spam business cards. If it has a link, it could take users to a phishing website and not-so-tech savvy users might end up handing over private and personal information. Also some links could come loaded with mobile viruses, which means as soon as you click, your smartphone is infected. One way to avoid spam messages is of course to keep your profile private on WhatsApp and only let your contacts access your profile. You can go to settings in WhatsApp and ensure that only your contacts see your profile, your status and profile photo. Also block people who send you messages with random business cards, etc, especially if you don’t know who these people are. Recently Instagram cracked down on spam and **Facebook** **decided that it would stop fake stories** from coming on news feeds. In fact, Instagram killed off quite a few accounts and some even saw their followers drop by millions. As this Business Insider piece points out “Justin Bieber’s Instagram fan base plummeted by 3.5 million fans, Akon went from 4.3 million to 1.9 million,” all thanks to Instagram taking a stand against spam and fake accounts. Both Instagram and WhatsApp are now owned by Facebook and it remains to be seen how WhatsApp will tackle the issue of spam messaging on the app.