If you have received a suspicious message on WhatsApp from a foreign number with the international dialing code +27 (0027)be very careful, because you are most likely objects of the so-called “South Africa scam”. This has claimed several victims over the course of this summer and, as demonstrated by some reports we have received in recent hours, it has reappeared in recent days. The scheme used by cyber criminals is more or less the same as other scams that have been spread with the famous Meta messaging app: you receive a message from a foreign number with the prefix +27, often with a variation on the theme of «Excuse me, can I talk to you for a moment?». If you reply, you will receive it at this point a (fictitious) job offer which has the sole purpose of making the person contacted fall for the deception: a scam similar to that of “friendly messages” from numbers with international prefixes.
How the South Africa +27 area code scam works
Analyzing the How the South Africa +27 code scam worksyou can see how the modus operandi used by scammers follows more or less faithfully the “script” already seen in other scams, such as that of the Portugal area code or the Netherlands area code.
It all starts with a seemingly friendly message, like «Hi, can I talk to you for a moment?». Regardless of the answer given, the scammer then asks his potential victim «Want to know more about the job». At that point the attacker could invite the user to open a link that takes you to a form to fill in with your personal or banking data or it could convince the user to perform simple tasks (for example sharing or liking online videos) to receive modest payments sums of money, to be “unlocked” by making payments in favor of whoever is offering the “work”. By following the instructions received in chat, you will clearly not obtain any profit and you could risk the theft of your personal data or some other type of computer fraud.
How to protect yourself from the +27 (0027) prefix message scam
If you were to stumble upon the +27 area code scam, now you know how to recognize it. But what you can do to defend yourself from this latest attempt at online fraud? First of all, it’s a good thing do not follow the instructions of the messages delivered to you: do not open any links, do not send any money, do not download any files and do not do anything else that the scammer asks you to do. In addition to ignoring the scammer’s requests, we strongly advise you to block and report suspicious numbers using WhatsApp settings.
Source
Reports received in the editorial office and reception of a message from a number with the +27 prefix delivered to the author of the article