You might end up with malware/virus on your phone/computer
A few scams related to Women’s Day have been making rounds over social media, specifically WhatsApp, for a couple of days. The scam isn’t limited to KFC but other brands as well as Adidas was prominently seen in the WhatsApp messages offering users free shoes, later busted.
This KFC Women’s Day scam is not new either as it was initially busted in later 2019 by KFC Malaysia itself. Somehow these messages have reached here in Pakistan and users are unintentionally keep forwarding which is the major purpose of this scam – spread as much as possible. The article has been updated to include KFC Pakistan’s official confirmation at the end of the page.
Not only that it will waste your precious time by resharing or forwarding it to your friends multiple times before you could unlikely to win anything, but it also contains malware. So don’t just fall for anything like that and do not keep resharing.
Here it’s how a user gets a message and follows the steps to fall for the trap. You get a message as the one follows.
Following the link takes you to the browser and opens a webpage with a couple of gift boxes that you will open. You might fail with the first two boxes but the third one is sure to open with the free gift making you eager to follow onwards.
That’s where you will be prompted to share it until the progress bar is fully green. Around 10 times you click the WhatsApp button (complete forwarding it or not, doesn’t matter) and you can click the “continue” button.
The last step will lead you to click the link where you will end up on a dead-end with nothing but hidden malware. You may not even know what has got you, on a mobile phone, with no protection software installed. Only anti-malware software could detect it, like the one below detected as “Script: SNH-gen [Trj]”
Note: this scam will only run on the smartphone’s browser as they know most smartphones won’t be running any anti-malware protection.
Such threats sometimes are turned out to be False-Positives but when talking about a literal scam, it’s most probably a real threat. So better to stay away from free goodies until you know the source of the sender.
With this specific message, you might know who’s sending you the message because even the sender won’t know what he has shared with you. Right now. it’s good to share this article with your friends before they get trapped. To reach more useful content in time follow us on our facebook page and twitter handle.
Update 08-03-2021: KFC Pakistan has now issued a notice to officially confirm it as a fake news
This article was originally published in Tech Prolonged.