Seven of the Most Common WhatsApp Scams (and How to Avoid Them)

Most typical WhatsApp scams aren’t high-tech security breaches. They aren’t orchestrated by state-sponsored hacker groups with a bottomless wallet and military-grade technology. In fact, most of them are run by low-tech crime syndicates relying on social engineering techniques to take advantage of people’s blind spots and trust in others. Meta removed 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts associated with cyber crime and digital scams just in the second half of 2025. But the attacks show no sign of slowing down because they are low on cost and easy to spin up, with chatbots executing most of the legwork on autopilot. However, there’s a flip side to all this: social engineering only works when you don’t know what to look for.  Most of these scams follow a specific playbook and have a similar pattern of execution. If you know what to watch out for, you can stop them before they compromise your data or lead you into a financial trap. Below are seven of the most common scams that WhatsApp cybercriminals like to run, with tips on how to safely avoid every one of them. Learn how to tell when you’re about to be scammed, enable new features that protect your account privacy, and know how to respond when an attack is already underway.  You can enable two-step verification on WhatsApp under Settings > Account Credit: Meta The verification code hijack I’d rate this as the most dangerous WhatsApp scam in this list, because it locks you out of…