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Among the hundreds of WhatsApp messages that a person receives per day, several links to media, YouTube videos or hilarious tweets are sneaked in. And, in general, nothing happens if you read them by clicking on them to go in search of content. However, it is not too bad to get into the eighties socialist plan and use a strong "links, entry, no" . You can always change your mind later.

Recently several have appeared. The journalist Gina Tost , for example, posted on her Twitter account a text message sent by a private number in which, using her name, they warned that she had won the fifth prize in an -existing- Mercadona contest . He used a nearby language and, to give a greater sense of security, assured that they had tried to contact her by other means before showing a link to, apparently, claiming his prize.

A similar scam also emerged recently posed as Post Office and urged victims to follow "instructions" on the link to find out what had happened with a package that could not be delivered . Imagine that someone knocks on your door, tells you that you have a package waiting at the Post Office and then he takes your wallet and starts to gossip or asks you for a copy of the house keys. This is similar.

"That someone says that it is Correos does not imply that it is; I can say that I am his majesty the king, but obviously I am not," explains José Rosell , managing partner of S2 Grupo . "They are tricks of the grossest, but we fall," he acknowledges. The reason? Simple: "the truth is that those who do have imagination."

The problem is that when entering these fraudulent pages, all kinds of things can happen and no good things happen: since they install a malicious program to continue the deception and they are done with the personal and bank details of the victim. "People think that nothing can happen to them and by the time they realize that something is wrong, it's too late," Rosell said.

In this situation, the manager sees a simple solution, at least in the short term: never open links. "They take advantage of the fact that people are good; we are confident by nature." This should always be done, at least, with unknown senders . Another option is to go directly to the site in question, which is what Rosell usually does: "If you tell me it is a Post, I go to the Post page and look for the option."

But what happens when it is a contact that sends it? In many cases the first symptom of this virtual infection is precisely the sending of new messages in search of more unsuspecting. In that case, it is always better to ask and risk looking bad than not asking and risk ending up worse .

In any case, it is easy to protect oneself without falling into paranoia with a mixture of common sense (is it a strangely worded message or does it reach a point?) And minimal knowledge. Thus, for example, a shortened link should never be opened if it does not come from a reputed source, either in person or at destination (a link to an official page will hardly be part of an attack. "It's like the hoaxes: there are means of trust and others that are not and with people the same thing happens ", summarizes Rosell.

In this sense it should be remembered that the address of the page of a company such as Apple will always be Apple.com, never something that includes the brand name with dashes (the separations in a URL are made with bars), other words and much less A strange domain.

All these solutions are still a patch. In Rosell's opinion, there is only one that would be effective in the long term: " training and awareness ." In this way the possible victims would be aware that they are and the value of their data or access their equipment, which would make them act more cautiously when opening the virtual doors. "Children are told when they are young, what is stealing and what is wrong, but not what is phishing , for example, which is also stealing."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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