The victims included the Colombian government authorities, as well as some well-known journalists from that country.

In this context, the Minister of the Government of Bogotá, Luis Ernesto Gómez, on Monday warned of the violation of his personal WhatsApp account. Please be careful. If you receive a message asking for an SMS code to be sent, don’t reply, so the account was hacked, ”the administrator wrote on Twitter.

The criminals’ strategy is to send a text message to, and in, the victim’s cell phone They are requesting a security code that they inadvertently sent to this number. Once a person responds, criminals end up accessing the contacts and all the information on the chat platform.

Hello. Sorry, I accidentally sent you a 6-digit code, can you send it to me? It’s urgentThe malicious message says. Without knowing what happened, the user receives a WhatsApp message saying that they cannot log in because another person is using their account on another device.

Among those affected are journalists Diana Calderon of Radio Caracol and Gabriel Meluk from Time. Both of them denounced on their Twitter accounts that they had been victims of the same method and that they had been impersonated.

between Recommendations not to fall into this deceptionContact not to share the verification code you received as a text message on your phone and not open any link directing you to “verify your account”.

Also, always use the second authentication factor in WhatsApp (Settings – Account – Two-step verification – Enter Security PIN). Also, periodically check the devices that your account is logged into through WhatsApp Web and update WhatsApp and the phone’s operating system permanently.