I fell for the Booking.com WhatsApp scam today. There has apparently been a #databreach at #bookingcom, which provides a little bit of truth to this “please verify your credit card now” scam. They knew my name, my phone number, the hotel I was staying at and the exact dates. That, a little bit of time pressure and a potential quick solution got me.
I managed to complete the flow once, which according to them would only reserve the money. Something failed and I tried again. This time they were asking me to confirm the balance of my account for verification, and that finally triggered the alert for me.
I’m retrospect, the originating WhatsApp number was located in Brazil (which was not where I was going). The name didn’t match the name of the Hotel representative in the message, and the website’s title was Booking.com, which didn’t match the actual host name in the URL. I didn’t notice.
Approach shit like this calmly and don’t let people push you to rash decisions.
