Warning: WhatsApp accounts being stolen, then used to ask for money

NORTH IPSWICH, QUEENSLAND, 2 September 2026 — The Centre has been told of scam messages reaching our members, including the ladies group. It is worth understanding how this one works, because the part that does the damage does not look like a scam at all.

It happens in two stages. First the scammer takes over somebody's WhatsApp account. Then they use that account to ask that person's own contacts for money.

The first stage almost always turns on a six-digit code. You receive a text message from WhatsApp containing a code you did not ask for. Very soon after, someone messages you asking you to send it on. They may say it was sent to your number by mistake, that they are locked out of their own account, that they need it to add you to a group, or that they are from WhatsApp support. If you send that code, they are into your account and you are out of it.

Never send that code to anyone. Nobody has a legitimate reason to ask you for it. Not a friend, not a relative, not somebody claiming to be from WhatsApp, and not anybody claiming to be from this Centre. WhatsApp itself will never ask you for it.

The second stage is what reaches everybody else. Once the scammer holds the account, they message that person's contacts and ask for money, and it works because it is not a stranger calling from an unknown number. It is a real account belonging to a real person you know, with her name, her photograph and her history of messages sitting above the request.

So please treat any request for money that arrives by message as unverified, however well you know the sender. Telephone that person on the number you already have for them and ask them out loud. A scammer holding the account can reply to a message; they cannot answer her phone in her voice. If the request presses you to hurry, or asks you to keep it quiet, that is the scam and not the person.

Please turn on two-step verification in WhatsApp now, before anything happens. Open WhatsApp, then Settings, then Account, then Two-step verification, and turn it on. It asks you to choose a six-digit PIN that only you know. With it switched on, the code alone is no longer enough to take your account, which stops this attack. It takes about a minute.

If your account has already been taken, register WhatsApp again on your own phone with your own number straight away. Receiving a fresh code and entering it signs the other person out. Then tell your contacts, by another means if you must, that any request for money sent from your account was not from you.

If you have already sent money, telephone your bank immediately and ask them to stop or recall the payment. Time matters a great deal. You can also report it to Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au and to police through ReportCyber at cyber.gov.au.

Please pass this on, and particularly to older members of your family and to anyone who may not have heard of this. Please also tell the Centre's President or Secretary, at admin@fzic.org, if you are contacted or if your account is taken, so that we can warn everybody else quickly.

Nobody has done anything wrong by receiving one of these messages, and nobody has done anything wrong if they were taken in. The people doing this are practised and they are convincing. Tell us, so that the next person is ready for them.