It won't make your WhatsApp experience anymore 'beautiful'

A new 'colourful' WhatsApp scam is on the loose and users have been warned against falling for it.

If you get a message inviting you to change the colours on your WhatsApp, ignore it!

According to a report by The Independent, the site uses Cyrillic letters to make it look like whatsapp.com (it's actually ?h??????.com).

How does the scam work

On visiting the link, a message inviting user to change the colour of their WhatsApp pops up, saying: "New colours for WhatsApp, now you can change your WhatsApp and leave it your favourite colours", adding that it's available for iOS, Windows, Apple, and Blackberry.

The site then asks visitors to share the site with 12 friends for 'verification'. On 'verifying', visitors are told that the feature is only available through the desktop site, indicating that they need to install an extension called 'BlackWhats' from the Chrome Web Store.

However, instead of giving users a 'beautiful' colourful WhatsApp experience - it actually infects systems with malware.

The extension has now been removed by Google.

Earlier this month, Oman's Information Technology Authority (ITA) had also warned residents against this scam.

"The link is in fact spelled with letters that aren't directly in English: ?h??????(dot)com. The link has an adware virus," a statement from the ITA said.

"We recommend that users should not to visit such sites or applications, and only go to the official website of the application, or directly through the official application of the same company," the Information Technology Authority warned.

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