WhatsApp ‘Sextortion Video Call’ Scam: What Is It, How To Protect Yourself – News18

WhatsApp is one of the most widely used instant messaging applications in India. With nearly every Indian spending a most amount of their time on this Meta-owned app, hackers and scammers frequently come up with new tricks to dupe victims on WhatsApp. In recent months, scammers have been employing a new video call trick.

Now, WhatsApp users are reporting scandalous video calls on regular basis. In fact, Delhi Police recently arrested two men for allegedly making “sextortion calls” on WhatsApp to Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel They made a video call, played explicit content, and tried to blackmail him.

“However, the minister is reported to have quickly ended the call and informed the police about the incident. Incidentally, this is no isolated case of sextortion.,” Gadgets Now reported.

Sextortion crimes are increasing in India and globally due to the popularity of video calls. It is a type of cybercrime that involves blackmailing someone by threatening to expose sexually explicit images or videos of them.

Even the FBI has issued a warning about criminals using AI to create explicit images for extortion, mainly from innocent online images or chats.

How To Save Yourself From WhatsApp Sextortion Video Call Scam

WhatsApp now allows user to silence calls from unknown numbers. This feature will ensure you don’t fall for any of the dangerous WhatsApp scams which involve people calling you via WhatsApp (both audio and video) to steal your money or other information.

You can manually enable the feature from the settings which ensures that the messaging app automatically silences the call coming from random numbers that are not on your contact list.

– Click on the three-dot menu at the top-right on WhatsApp

– Go to Setting of WhatsApp

– Click on Privacy

– Scroll down to Calls

– Enable Silence unknown callers

– Head back to main WhatsApp feed