Meta said Tuesday that it has canceled over seven million WhatsApp accounts linked to scammers in the first half of this year and is bolstering safeguards against scams. “Our team discovered the accounts and disabled them before the criminal organizations that created them could use them,” said Clair Deevy, director of WhatsApp’s external affairs section. The scams, which are often run by organized gangs, range from bogus cryptocurrency investments to get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, WhatsApp executives said in a briefing.
“There is always a catch and it should be a red flag for everyone: you have to pay upfront to get promised returns or earnings,” WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, announced in a blog post. Meta claims that WhatsApp found and blocked more than 6.8 million accounts linked to fraud centers, most of which were located in Southeast Asia. According to the tech companies, WhatsApp and Meta collaborated with OpenAI to stop a fraud that was linked to Cambodia and used ChatGPT to create text messages that included a link to a WhatsApp chat in order to trick victims.
On Tuesday, Meta started warning WhatsApp users to exercise caution when they are added to unknown chat groups by strangers. New “safety overviews” offer details on the group, advice on how to recognize scams, and the opportunity to leave quickly. “We’ve all been there: someone you don’t know attempting to message you, or add you to a group chat, promising low-risk investment opportunities or easy money, or saying you have an unpaid bill that’s overdue,” Meta wrote on her blog. “The reality is, these are often scammers trying to prey on people’s kindness, trust and willingness to help, or their fears that they could be in trouble if they don’t send money fast.”
