Recently, scammers have devised lots of dubious means to scam lots of people. One of these commonly used means now is the hacking of individual whatsapp accounts.
Once they are able to successfully hack your account, they use your whatsapp number to send messages into various groups that you were part of.
Being a victim of such an attack is not very pleasant because it can totally destroy your integrity and members of the group will no longer accord you the kind of respect they used to.
It is therefore imperative that you take measures to secure your WhatsApp account so that no hacker or scammer can have access to your account.
Whatsapp has an internal security feature that enables you to prevent any such things from happening and it takes less than a minute to set it up. This is referred to as the two factor authentication.
The two factor authentication, is a two step verification process in WhatsApp that prevents any unscrupulous person from stealing your SIM card (or otherwise taking over your phone number) and using that to take over your account and impersonate you.
With two-step enabled, an account reset requires you to have access to the phone number and enter a six-digit passcode.
This means that even if the person is able to use your number they will be required to provide the 6-digit secret code which you have chosen and for that matter may not be able to access your whatsapp information.
How to turn on “two step verification” on WhatsApp
Follow the following steps to quickly turn on the two step verification on your WhatsApp;
- Open WhatsApp on your phone
- Click on the three dots icon on the top right corner
- Go to settings
- Select accounts followed by two-step verification
Follow the prompts that come up to set it up.
Note that you will be required to provide a 6-digit secret code or pin, then an email. You can go ahead to save it after you have provided those details.
You can update your pin at any point in time but make sure you choose a pin that you can easily remember.
Also, don’t share your pin with anyone else.
Some of the hackers have also started targeting groups and therefore are in search of group admins who are vulnerable.
When they identify an admin like that, they hack his/her account and remove all other admins of the various groups he manages. As such no one can remove them and they use these groups for promoting their own agenda.
You have to therefore take measures to prevent your WhatsApp groups from being hacked like that.
Follow these steps to set up the security feature that may prevent this from happening:
- Set up two-step verification using the steps outlined above.
- Open any group that you are an admin to
- Tap on the three dots icon on the top right corner
- Go to group info
- Go to group settings
- Go to edit group info
- Choose “Only Admins” can change this group’s subject, icon and description.
- Press OK
Let’s be cautious, prevent being HACKED and be safe.