Another hoax claiming that WhatsApp will be shutting down soon is making the rounds on social media. Security researcher Graham Cluley has spotted several variations of the message, citing different reasons for the service's shutdown.
“Your Whatsapp will stop working on January 28th Message from Jim Balsamic: (CEO of Whatsapp) we had many usernames like yours on WhatsApp Messenger. We ask all users to forward this message to their entire contact list. If you do not forward this message, your account will stop working and be deleted within the next 48 hours.
Please DO NOT ignore this message. If you wish to reactivate your account after it has been deleted, you will be charged $25.”
Of course, this is not the first time we have encountered such extortion messages. They usually appear for services or websites that are quite popular. In addition to the hoaxes that occasionally warn of the closure of Facebook, or the charging of the service, variations of the above hoax that used the name of the company's CEO Jim Balsamic have appeared since November 2012.
If you encounter these messages, simply ignore them. Do not spread them as this will help the scammers.
