Hassan Khan
If you’ve ever received a strange message on WhatsApp that felt too good to be true, you’re not alone and WhatsApp is doing something about it.
This week, Meta, the company that created WhatsApp, declared that it has removed 6.8 million accounts linked to illegal scams. These weren’t just random spammers they were part of global fraud centers, some involving forced labor and serious criminal networks, that target people like you and me.
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This all happened in just the first six months of the year, as Meta ramps up its mission to make its platforms safer. And it’s not stopping there. WhatsApp is introducing new features to help us stay protected like a safety prompt when someone you don’t know adds you to a group and gentle reminders to pause before replying to suspicious messages. It’s a way of helping users think twice before engaging.
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Meta also explained how these scams often work: they don’t just stay on one app. A scam might start on a dating app, shift to WhatsApp, and finish on a payment platform. Scammers use everything from fake crypto investment opportunities to AI generated messages using ChatGPT just to get people to fall into their traps.
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In fact, one major campaign they shut down was run from a scam center in Cambodia, and it wasn’t just on WhatsApp it included TikTok, Telegram, and AI tools too. Meta and OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, actually teamed up to shut it down.
It’s scary how smart scammers are getting, but it’s reassuring to see big tech companies finally stepping up. While no system is perfect, efforts like this make a real difference in keeping people safer online.
