Well, that's great: The €9 ticket has just been released for cheap train travel across Germany, and now the DB is apparently giving away money too! There is an alleged DB competition circulating on WhatsApp, but it has nothing to do with it: it is an SMS trap with an endless loop, which can be expensive!
The alleged DB competition
Many users receive a link to a competition from their WhatsApp contacts. This is what it looks like:
A “Deutsche Bahn State Transport Subsidy” seems to be giving something away or giving it away? Well, then let's just tap the link (which varies a lot, there are apparently dozens of sites for the scam)!
The wrong competition
We land on a page that only visually looks like the DB, but based on the URL (circled in red in the screenshot below) you can see that you are on a completely different page. Apparently we can win €2000 if we answer just four simple questions.
The link distribution and the start of the SMS trap
After we have of course “won” and chosen the right gift package (which always happens), we should first share the link to the “competition” with the WhatsApp contacts - this is how it spreads so widely. After that we still don't have our winnings because we have to register an application.
An endless text message loop
The “registration” consists of first allowing push messages from an unknown site (which means you get a lot of spam sent to your smartphone) and then answering several questions via paid SMS to foreign numbers... in an endless loop!
The small print also states that this is a paid service. The fraudsters earn a lot of money every time they send a reply SMS to several foreign numbers - and you pay a lot of fees every time you send them!
Conclusion
If you receive such a link from your WhatsApp acquaintances, please let them know that it is a scam! Many people will probably give up in annoyance after five to seven text messages when they notice that the questions are constantly being repeated - but then the child has already fallen into the well and a lot of money is gone!
Also interesting:
In this scam, fraudsters try to log in to their victim's WhatsApp account via a call in order to steal data and phone numbers.
Anyone who complies with the request to enter a certain code has fallen into the trap. WhatsApp: Beware of new scams
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )