The 'son in distress' scam is back, but this time with a new summer version.

The "child in distress" scam has gone viral in Spain due to its widespread credibility. This fraud involves impersonating the victims' children by sending messages requesting money for supposedly urgent payments. However, coinciding with the summer season, cybercriminals are wasting no time creating new versions of this scam, as they have spread a summer version of the "child in distress" scam .

The National Police warns on its profile on the social network X (formerly Twitter) that, as happens in similar scams, cybercriminals use an unknown telephone number to pretend to be the son or daughter of the victim, but this time claiming that the mobile phone has gotten wet and is broken , so they are using another smartphone with a different telephone number to report the problem.

The goal of this scam is to trick adults into making a payment ; however, the National Police advise against falling for it. As you may know, this scam aims to create a sense of emergency so the victim acts quickly, without thinking or reasoning about what is happening. Therefore, it is advisable to try to contact the person involved through another means to determine whether what is happening is real or not.

What is the child in distress scam?

INCIBE explains on its official website that the user is the victim of a WhatsApp scam . From an unknown number, the cybercriminal requests money under any pretext. Furthermore, to obtain the requested transfer or payment , he deceives the user by telling the user that he is the user's son or daughter and that he has changed his phone number because he had some kind of problem with his previous number.

How to Avoid the Child in Distress Scam

If the user has received a message of this nature and has proceeded to make a payment, they should contact their bank as soon as possible to try to cancel the transaction . Similarly, if they provided credit or debit card information, they should cancel or block it with the bank to prevent misuse .

On the other hand, you should block the phone number from WhatsApp to prevent the cybercriminal from reconnecting. It's also advisable to report the incident to the State Security Forces so they can open an investigation and attempt to stop the scammers who are using this method to deceive users.