Over the years, the WhatsApp messaging app has become grounds for circulating malicious items and fake news. Some few years back, a message was circulating on the platform preaching about a certain WhatsApp Gold that had more exciting features the mundane WhatsApp didn’t have. Well, the WhatsApp Gold message is thingy is a hoax.
This message has appeared in 2019 and this time with a link to a supposed video and named “Martinelli, is soon to release”.
Coming along with this WhatsApp Gold message is another message warning people not to open the video. According to Fossbytes, people are saying the [WhatsApp Gold] message contains a malware and “opening the video [link] will lead to malware hitting the smartphones.” Thus, they warn that other users should not be tempted to open the link to the supposed video.
While the warning message which has gone viral has “invoked fear” in WhatsApp users tempted to have new features in their WhatsApp messaging apps, it has turned out that the message is actually a hoax. Neither Facebook, the mother company nor the WhatsApp company itself has not sanctioned any such video, or the warning message.
Kindly subscribe to our YouTube channel
The warning message is also a hoax reads according to Fossbytes. The message reads, “Today the radio was talking about WhatsApp Gold and it is true. There is a video that will be released tomorrow on WhatsApp and is called Martinelli. Do not open it. Enter your phone and nothing you do will fix it”.
Some people have already taken it to Twitter to let people know about this fake messages and unsanctioned features.
It came before…
Back in 2016, the same WhatsApp Gold message went viral. It was advertising that users would get various new WhatsApp features upon downloading the link in the message. Conversely, users who downloaded the link welcomed the entry of malware in their devices.
You are on your own…
WhatsApp is becoming more and more prone to such malware circulations, especially on Android phones. There is too many of such scams moving around the messaging app and it is about time the company does something.
But until Facebook and WhatsApp lay out measures to check these, you are your own security personnel. You must be vigilante. Do not go around clicking any link sent to via WhatsApp. Currently, there is no measure to check the authenticity of a link, so you just have to be careful.
Discussion about this post