While Russia, India, and Turkey had the highest number of malicious links found, Brazil and India had the highest number of phishing attacks per user on WhatsApp.
According to a new report released on Wednesday, July 14, India is among the top three countries targeted by phishing attacks, which are carried out mostly using instant mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
According to data shared by Kaspersky Internet Security for Android, which is part of the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, the biggest share of malicious links were delivered over WhatsApp (89.6 percent) and Telegram (5.6 percent) between December 2020 and May 2021.
Viber, a messaging app, is in third place with a 4.7 percent share, while Hangouts had less than 1 percent.
Russia (46 percent), Brazil (15 percent), and India (7 percent) were the countries with the highest number of phishing attacks.
Tatyana Shcherbakova, Senior Web Content Analyst at Kaspersky, said “Statistics show that phishing in instant messenger apps is still one of the most popular tools among scammers. This is partly due to the wide popularity of these apps among the audience, as well as the ability to use the built-in functionality of applications to carry out attacks,”
Shcherbakova added “Vigilance combined with anti-phishing technologies form a reliable tool in the fight against phishing in messenger apps,”
Messenger apps surpassed social networks in terms of user popularity by 20 percent in 2020, according to researchers, and became the most popular communication tool. Messenger apps had a global audience of 2.7 billion in 2020, and it is expected to grow to 3.1 billion by 2023.
Between December 2020 and May 2021, Kaspersky recorded 91,242 detections worldwide. Telegram had the fewest detections, but was geographically similar to WhatsApp.
Russia (56 percent) was the country with the most malicious links, followed by India (6 percent) and Turkey (4 percent). Brazil (177) and India (158) were the countries with the most phishing assaults per user on WhatsApp.
The researchers noted that “Even if messages and websites look real, the hyperlinks, most likely, will have incorrect spelling, or they can redirect you to a different place,”
The researchers advised “Remain cautious in any situation. Even if a message seems friendly, be wary of links and attachments,”