If you receive a message with a Whats App image like the one I screen captured below which asks you to click on a Play button, pleased DELETE IT RIGHT AWAY and DO NOT click the Play button and DO NOT REPLY to the sender even if they are close to or well known to you.
If you want to communicate with the sender about it, CREATE A NEW EMAIL MESSAGE to them like I am doing now.
I had an e-mail message dated May 13th 2015 at 19:36 hours (7.36pm) purportedly from a friend and fellow alumni association committee member with a supposed Whats App screen asking me to click on the Play button to play a video as in the screen cap attached.
Thinking it to be a legitimate message, I clicked on the play button and it opened a browser and played a video advertisement for a health product extracted from what looks like a mangosteen fruit.
I then replied to the message thank her and a doctor friend called me about the product and asked me to buy some for him.
Several others also replied to me in response and one was alerted to the danger by the anti virus or anti spam on her computer and instead e-mailed me separately instead of replying to me.
Admittedly, I was a bit curious since the purported sender does not have a WhatsApp account as far as I know but I understand that one can still send and receive WhatApp from a web browser like one sends and receives Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc,. so I did not think further about it.
I have done a Google search on "Whats App virus" and it is confirmed to be a known virus.
If you use a web mail service such as Gmail like I do, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and others, it would be best to purge all your old messages and messages in your deleted, spam and other folders to deny the virus access to e-mail addresses.
I deleted everything from my Gmail web mail,including the over 5000 contacts since I receive and send my Gmail messages using an e-mail client, so I do not need the contacts in my Gmail web mail.
Apologies for any inconvenience I may have caused on my part by not being more suspicious about this message I had received purportedly from this friend.
RegardsCharles
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