As usual, scammers are running rampant, but this time they have been spotted buying up space in Google's search ads and posing as a fairly legitimate version of WhatsApp Web.

The link to the fake WhatsApp site appears at the top of Google, and as TechNave (opens in new tab) reports, the people behind this fake site must have invested a lot of money to get the malicious link to appear in a prominent place.

Looking at the images, the forged site appears to be an almost identical copy of the official WhatsApp web application:

What is up com... Really," that is, if I hadn't been wearing glasses, or had a hangover, I might have been fooled. Still, the site itself is very convincing, and even displays a fake QR code that you scan and instantly hand over your login information to the offender.

However, there do seem to be a few things that hackers may have overlooked.

First, there is no way to switch the language to anything other than Simplified Chinese. Second, and most oddly, WhatsApp has been blocked in China since 2017, so the vast majority of people who can actually read the site cannot access WhatsApp for years without circumventing the block.

On second thought, these may seem like an oversight to us, but they may be tactics deliberately chosen by hackers. Maybe WhatsApp searches are still popular in China. Or perhaps the hackers consider themselves "Villain Killers" and are targeting those who seek to circumvent Chinese government control for the dastardly act of using a free and secure messaging service.

Regardless of how these hackers see themselves, Google is on to them and has thankfully removed the ads; it appears that WhatsApp's fake site has not yet been shut down, so beware if you are invited to WhatsApp through a suspicious link.

As ever, one should be wary of online links. This is not the first time Google has advertised fraudulent sites at the top of its search results. Earlier this year, former graphics card maker and peripheral manufacturer EVGA was the target of a similar scam, with a site pretending to be EVGA appearing at the top through paid advertising.

The fake EVGA site has long since been taken down, but it is believed to have fooled several people in the meantime.