New Delhi, Mar 19:┬аSignalling the escalation of threat posed by Chinese hackers, the Indian Army issued a message for the general populace, listing a series of precautionary measures to be enacted to prevent their social media accounts from being hacked by overseas intruders.

The Army explicitly warned about the vulnerability of WhatsApp тАУ quite arguably the most popular messaging application in the nation.

The┬аAdditional Directorate General of Public Interface┬а(ADGPI), the Army's official communication channel, tweeted a video on Sunday which warned users against Chinese hackers breaking into their WhatsApp groups and extracting personal information of all the users.

According to the ADGPI, the numbers beginning with '+86' are being used by Chinese hackers to target WhatsApp groups in India.

"The Chinese use all kinds of platforms to penetrate your digital world. WhatsApp groups are a new way of hacking into your system. Chinese numbers starting with +86 barge into your groups and start extracting all the data," said the video tweeted by the Army.

The ADGPI further┬аrecommends WhatsApp users to scrutinise the groups regularly and save the numbers of all members in their list of contacts.

Those switching to a new number, via a fresh SIM, are recommended to "completely destroy" their old SIM to prevent misuse. In case the the WhatsApp number is being changed, the group admin should be informed, the video further suggests.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 19, 2018 03:55 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).