Karen Koster has warned people to be careful and not to fall for a scam that duped her.
The Ireland AM presenter said she thought she was “savvy” online and didn’t expect to be tricked.
Scammers managed to hack into her WhatsApp account where they gained access to her contacts and pictures.
Karen said the scam came after she received a message from a friend and it seemed legitimate.
She added: “I was here and in an ad break I got a text from one of our producers going, ‘I am after getting a verification code sent to your phone by mistake, will you text it back to me? It should be in your text messages’. And this was a WhatsApp from her.
“It seemed so legitimate. It was coming up to Christmas and I thought she could have been online shopping and copied and pasted my number because I was the last person she texted.”
Karen was worried that pictures of her children would be shared online after her gallery was compromised.
She told Ireland AM: “Certainly you don’t want pictures of your kids all over the internet.
“It was a means for them to get a verification code for your WhatsApp so they could get into your contacts. I never thought I’d be one to fall for these things. It is so easily done.”
