In recent months, scams conveyed through WhatsApp messages coming from numbers with a foreign prefix and managed by automated bots they affected many users. The latest “variant” of this scam concerns the use by cyber criminals of numbers with Kenyan area code (+254). The “scheme” is essentially this: numbers of potential victims looking for work are contacted, offering them large earnings for simple tasks to complete and they are invited to open links that refer to fraudulent web pages, which are sometimes used to steal personal information, sometimes to steal credit card information. To defend yourself, you need to block and report these numbers on WhatsApp.
How the Kenya scam works
The message many users are receiving has text that might look something like this:
Hi everyone, I’m the general manager of the Instagram project. I am currently hiring a part-time team to work from home. No hours of work are required and payment is immediate. Daily wage: up to €800. Newcomers receive €5 immediately.
Recognizing the scam by analyzing similar messages is not at all complicated, at least not for the most attentive users; those who are in financial difficulty and perhaps desperately looking for work could be vulnerable. This means that upon receiving such “offers,” these users may ignore the warning signs and trust the message senders.
If you were to receive a message from a foreign number, perhaps with the prefix +254, where you are offered a job that requires zero effort with earnings that are absurd to say the least (perhaps up to €800), regardless of whatever your current economic and working situation, know that you are the subject of a scam. Don’t be fooled by those who would like you to believe otherwise!
How to defend yourself from the fake job offer scam for Instagram
For defend yourself from the Kenyan scamyou must first ignore the messages received from scammers, not answering and, above all, not by clicking on the links that they send you, nor even opening the attachments that they forward to you.
To stop scammers, then, block and report their contact on WhatsApp. This last step is essential to prevent the scam from spreading on WhatsApp and continuing its spread for a long time.
