Warning to Mansfield and Ashfield residents over new WhatsApp scam

The fake ‘voice message’ emails are spreading malware and can steal information from your device.

A spokesmaon from the East Midlands Cyber Secure team said: “The attack starts with an email claiming to be a notification from WhatsApp of a new private voice message.

“The email contains a creation date and 'clip duration' for the supposed message, along with a ‘Play’ button.

“The identity ‘Whatsapp Notifier’ masks a real email address belonging to a Russian road safety organisation.

“As the address and organisation are real, the messages won’t be flagged as spam or blocked by email security tools. Armorblox, which discovered the scam, believes the Russian organisation is playing a role without realising.

The ‘Play’ button will take the email recipient to a website which then asks them to click ‘Allow’ in an allow/block prompt to ‘confirm you are not a robot’.

“Once ‘allow’ is clicked, the browser will prompt to install software that turns out to be information-stealing malware.

“While there are numerous ‘tell tale' signs that this is a scam, these attacks rely on people missing the signs – perhaps because they are waiting for urgent or exciting news that could well be delivered by a voice message,” the police team said in a Facebook post shared by Derbyshire police.

The advice is to never play Whatsapp voicemails via a link in an email.

“Please share to make others aware,” the East Midlands Cyber Secure team spokesman said.