The Canary Islands Computer Crime Observatory (ODIC) has detected a wave of incidents due to the increase in hacked WhatsApp accounts in the Canary Islands, with Tenerife, La Gomera and La Palma being the main islands affected.
ODIC is receiving user reports who claim to be receiving messages from family or acquaintances’ phones where WhatsApp verification codes are required.
The Observatory recommends urgently activating security measures to avoid being exposed to these ‘phishing’ attacks by following the following steps: On WhatsApp, open Settings or Settings; touch Account; Two-step verification; Activate.
ODIC advises never share the verification code via SMS on WhatsApp with other people, not even with family or friends. If for some reason the code was shared and access to the WhatsApp account is lost, you must read the instructions below to recover the account.
If we suspect that someone else is using our WhatsApp account, we must notify our family and friendssince that person could impersonate us in your individual and group chats.
It must be taken into account that WhatsApp has end to end encryption and messages are stored on our device, so if someone accesses our account on another device, they will not be able to read our past conversations.
How to recover your account
To recover our account we must register on WhatsApp with our phone number and enter the 6-digit code that we will receive by SMS message to verify the number. More information on how to verify our phone number can be found in the Help Centers: Android | iPhone. Once we enter the 6 digit code sent by SMS message, the session of the person with access to our account will be automatically closed.
We may also be asked to enter a two-step verification code. If we don’t know that code, it is possible that the person with access to our account has activated two-step verification. In that case, we must wait seven days to access without the two-step verification code. Regardless of whether we know the two-step verification code or not, the session of the person with access to our account will be closed as soon as we enter the 6-digit code sent by SMS message.
In some cases, WhatsApp can automatically verify our phone number. If we have access to our account and we suspect that someone else is using it through WhatsApp Web or Desktop, ODIC recommends log out of all computers from our phone.
In order to protect our account, Whatsapp will notify us when someone tries to register a Whatsapp account with our phone number.
