There’s a WhatsApp phishing scam doing the rounds here in the UK based on free gift vouchers from big supermarket retailers. It’s doing well because (a) people are receiving the links from friends and (b) they’re disguising the false links with foreign letters.
Here’s two that I received in the last few days.
Check the subtle dot over the c of Tesco and the line on the d of Asda. They got my scam senses tingling but many people seem to have fallen for it based on the couple of messages I received. Apparently there’s a variant for Aldi too.
If you do follow the links (and I recommend you don’t), the first part asks for more friends to pass on the message to, and the next bit starts collecting personal info so they can send out the vouchers. Yeah, right. Fortunately, friends I’ve spoken to became more suspicious on the second section and dropped out.
This scam can easily be moved to other retailers in other countries so watch out for it, though the basic scam has been around for awhile. It’s the use of special characters that seems to be new. I imagine that they can be creative with other letters in addition to c and d. More at the BBC.