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Which? reports a staff member's family adopted a private sign-off after a fake WhatsApp message posing as her asked her mother for £2,500.
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Which?According to Which?, one of its own staff members was targeted by the scam where a criminal poses as a family member in trouble over WhatsApp. The experience led her family to build a defence a scammer cannot copy.
Alison Potter, a Senior Content Editor at Which?, describes a panicked phone call from her mother. Her mother had received a WhatsApp message that appeared to be from Potter, saying she was in trouble, had lost her phone, and needed money urgently. Her mother wanted to know if she should send more than the £2,500 the message asked for.
Potter recognised it immediately as the 'Hi Mum and Dad' scam, where criminals pose as a relative to request money. The message relies on urgency. It pressures the recipient to act fast, so they do not stop to question why a family member is messaging from an unfamiliar number and asking for cash out of the blue.
Her mother did stop to question it. She called Potter directly before sending anything. That single pause is what the scam depends on removing. Urgency only works if the person receiving the message skips the check; the moment a phone call happens instead, the scam has nothing left to run on.
After the call, Potter and her mother agreed on a private sign-off, known only to the two of them, added to the end of every message they send each other. It might be an emoji, a word, a phrase, or a series of numbers. Potter has not shared which. The point is that a scammer impersonating her has no way to know it, so its absence is the tell.
It adds a couple of seconds to writing a message. In exchange, a message claiming to be from a family member either carries the code or it does not, and there is nothing to debate beyond that.
A sign-off word is a small thing to set up and costs almost nothing to use. It works precisely because it is private between two people, not something a scammer could find by searching, guessing, or copying details from a real profile. That is the same shape Flggd looks for across scam reports: a simple habit that closes off a trick's one working mechanism, rather than a warning that has to be remembered every time.
Anyone who gets an urgent money request over WhatsApp, text or email from someone who appears to be a relative or friend can apply the same logic without a prearranged code: call the person on a number already saved for them, not one from the message, before sending anything.
