What’s App message

And again

But the scams are coming in thick and fast

Oh dear let’s try that again

Bumpity bump

But pity bump

I've had a few of these but my provider blocks them immediately. Some are addressed to Papa and some to Mama and they are all in German. (A) My kids would never write to me in German. I brought them up speaking English. (B) None of my family even use WhatsApp. We all use Signal.

My husband has had some too but as they always write to me rather than him he's quite clear that he wouldn't be the one they would write that to; he looks at his phone too seldom.

If you live in the UK. US, Canada. Oz or NZ and so only have your phone set to English language, perhaps you could agree a family code to always be able to identify the sender of the message.

Strategic bump for t***l avoidance.

I ask them which child it is?
Although, it is quite funny when one child has just left your house and another is walking in but you can see both as you're standing on your doorstep when you receive one of these scams!!
I suggest asking your children to give you a code, maybe a specific sentence or some numbers or colours, so if anything like this does happen then you can ask them for the code to ensure it's them. Like perhaps: one, 3, red, it's me. Or whatever.

I've put the poster's username into the search engine. No previous posts. That doesn't automatically mean that they are not genuine, but coupled with a link to a completely irrrelevant website, it does raise a doubt in my mind after my twelve years on Gransnet.

There are posters on other threads saying it would be wrong to run each new joiner through a very short checking system, that we should trust everyone. However, these days there are a lot of professional spammers and scammers who make a living from their commission on luring people to sites or directly scamming them into revealing details about themselves. The alternative is to be very careful about our online relationships!

This is a very old scam and although still doing the rounds there are more sophisticated ones around now unfirtunatelyb

Relevant to current concerns on other GN threads, here is a little note on getting caught out by scams and advertising spam.

There is even a post on this very thread which contains a link that would take you to a gamimg website. That site may or may not be a "clean" one - but I for one would rather make my own choice on which sites I want to visit, not be sent to one unawares because a marketer cons me into it.

The post may well be gone by now, or soon will be, but it does demonstrate how careful we have to be about following links from strangers.

Old thread resurected

A friend of mine fell for this type of scam and lost over £1000. She's no fool but got caught out at a vulnerable time.

It's amazing the ways people are thinking up to trick people.

Reported

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

I got this scam txt today , because I’m never off this site I knew it was a scam ! It wanted me to reply on what’s ap , I went into daft Mum note and told them they knew I never used WhatsApp and who on earth were they ! I shouldn’t have answered though!

I was nearly got by this scam. Lesson learned!

Sorry to hear you fell for the scam Lovetopaint I'm glad you didn't lose any money.

Unfortunately this one has been around for some but it's good to remind people