By Anthony Alex Akinola
Author | Web dev | Tech educator | Development advocate

Saturday, 22nd February, 2025

For decades until now, the use of internet that turned the world into global village, and communication apps had both made our everyday communication and other activities more than easier and faster. Unfortunately, there is bad side to the ubiquitous use of internet, which torments individuals; businesses/organisations; and governments, which is cybercrime.

Everything in life is like binary (a representation of 1 and 0 in computer science), up and down, day and night, good and bad. As good as tech is, there is bad side to it. There's nothing good that would not have it flaw, which could be its bad side.

Cybercrime is a continuous activity that cybercriminals and fraudsters are using to attack, steal, and cause panic as long as people use internet, which is why cybersecurity is a global topical issue.

In a recent time, an unknown individual or a group of persons presented a website https://h5.7qq5.com that's posing to be WAPlus, tricks WhatsApp users to register and link their WhatsApp account in order to earn marketing commisions every 24hrs as long as the WhatsApp accounts are online. They claims to use the WhatsApp accounts for ads and this made the none tech savvy and those who're not cybersecurity breach conscious voluntarily gave the cyber fraudsters who ownes the h5.7qq5.com access and control of their WhatsApp account unknowingly.

Once users link their WhatsApp accounts, they would follow some steps to receive some bonuses and continue receiving #50 (naira) every 24hrs. If a user invits friends and they link their WhatsApp account, such inviter would receive higher commision of #5500 sequentially. The first withdrawal is #1,000, followed by #5,500, #33,000, etc., which can only be withdrawn to Opay and Palmpay accounts.

The following image is collaged pages from the waplus https://h5.7qq5.com website:

Guess what they're doing with the accounts. They're using it to have direct conversation with WhatsApp users from different countries like Italy, UK, and others in order to carry out their fraudulent acts on victims who get into conversation with them without the knowledge of the WhatsApp account owners. This fraudulent acts damages the reputation of individuals whose WhatsApp accounts are used by the cyber fraudsters. Hundreds of Nigerians' WhatsApp account owners had been victims of this reputational damage without knowing as their WhatsApp accounts are used to carry out fraudulent activities.

After they gain control of the WhatsApp accounts, they sets the profile photo of the accounts to be seen by nobody in the Privacy settings and make conversations to disappear.

If you're a victim of this WhatsApp account reputational damage, do the following to see the people they're communicating with and recover your WhatsApp account:

• Go to Settings on your WhatsApp account, and then click on Chats. Under Chats, scroll down and click on Chat history. In the Chat history, click on 'Archive all chats', and then click 'OK' from the popup that appears, and your history would be archived. Go back from your chat history in the Settings to Chats, and you would see the archived chat history. Open it to see all your chat history.
• Click on WhatsApp kebab navigation menu icon (the triple vertical dots) to open the menu, and then click on 'Linked devices' in order to see if your WhatsApp account is linked to any unrecognised device (most especially Chrome browser). Click on the device, and then unlink your WhatsApp account.
• If your WhatsApp account is not showing your display picture, go to your WhatsApp account Settings, and click on 'Privacy'. In the Privacy, click on 'Profile photo' and then change the 'Who can see my Profile Photo' setting to 'Everyone'. Now your profile photo would display.

Henceforth, beware of social media possible security breach that comes from linking accounts with unforeknown and fraudulent online money making and affiliated marketing schemes. Many of them steals and sells information to cybercriminals and fraudsters, while some directly uses accounts to carry out crimes.