There’s an old scam, with a new twist, doing the rounds on WhatsApp in South Africa, and it’s costing people thousands of rands.

The WhatsApp begging scam is a combination of number theft, identity fraud, and good old-fashioned hacking.

Scammers are taking advantage of weaknesses in South Africa’s number portability systems to gain control of people’s phone numbers.

Once a scammer has successfully ported your number, they can then use it to request urgent money from the friends and family in your WhatsApp contact list.

Aldrin Sampear shared the following screengrab of a text exchange, on Twitter:

His post got this response from another South African who had fallen victim to the scam:

Per MyBroadband:

Many victims fall for the story and send the scammer all the details they need for a cardless cash withdrawal of amount they asked for.

This lets the scammer withdraw cash from an ATM with a one-time PIN provided by the victim.

Here’s how to defend yourself against WhatsApp begging scams.

1. Enable two-step verification

This is your first line of defence against scammers, and allows you to protect your account with a pin.

2. Double-check that the person asking for money is who they say they are

If you get a message from someone who urgently needs money, give them a call to make sure that it’s them. If they don’t answer, don’t transfer money.

3. Use WhatsApp’s number changing function if you change numbers

If you change your number you should also remember to migrate your WhatsApp account instead of creating a new one:

There are a few other steps you could take, which you can read here.

If you’re wondering how easily someone can port your number, IOL has some worrying news:

World Wide Worx data analyst Bryan Turner said how scammers ported their victims’ numbers varied from one network provider to the next.

“In some cases it’s as easy as walking into a store and saying: ‘Hey I lost my simcard, my number is 12345679. Can you please port it?’,” he said.

Turner says the legal porting process requires customers to present their Rica documentation, to be verified before it is approved.

“This also varies from branch to branch so one can’t really point fingers at network providers because it is their stores that are either under-trained or they are in on the scam,” Turner said.

Not exactly ideal.

In short, just exercise some caution and general common sense if you’re asked for money over WhatsApp.

Again, perhaps the most effective way to protect yourself from falling victim to the porting scam is the two-step verification process we mentioned above (step one).

It takes less than a minute, which is a worthwhile investment for a little peace of mind.

[sources:mybroadband&iol]