Overview
- Carabinieri cyber investigators in Naples report many complaints and say they are monitoring messaging platforms for the scam.
- Attackers exploit WhatsApp's linked‑devices feature by harvesting a verification code entered on a polished phishing page that imitates legitimate sites.
- Lures commonly ask recipients to vote in a contest for a friend or relative, including messages like "vote for my niece" or "I found your photo" with a link.
- Once paired, criminals read chats, impersonate the account holder and solicit money from contacts, then propagate the scam through the victim’s network.
- Italy’s postal police and consumer group Ctcu have issued alerts and advise users to remove unknown linked sessions, enable two‑step verification and never enter WhatsApp codes on external sites.