Every day criminal scammers attempt to play on people’s economic anxiety to trick people with too-good-to-be-true offers and pyramid schemes to earn quick money. As part of our ongoing efforts to protect people from scams, we’re sharing updates on disrupting attempts by criminal scam centers to target people on our apps, the latest insights into how these scams work, new anti-scam tools on WhatsApp and key safety tips.
Taking Action Against Scammers
Some of the most prolific sources of scams are criminal scam centers, often fueled by forced labor and operated by organized crime primarily in Southeast Asia. In the first six months of this year, as part of our ongoing proactive work to protect people from scams, WhatsApp detected and banned over 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centers. Based on our investigative insights into the latest enforcement efforts, we proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centers were able to operationalize them.
How Scammers Operate
These scam centers typically run many scam campaigns at once – from cryptocurrency investments to pyramid schemes. 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.
Scams may start with a text message or on a dating app, then move to social media, private messaging apps and ultimately payment or crypto platforms. In the course of just one scam, they often try to cycle people through many different platforms to ensure that any one service has only a limited view into the entire scam, making it more challenging to detect.
Working with Others to Protect People
As an example, recently WhatsApp, Meta and our peers at OpenAI disrupted scams efforts which we were able to link to a criminal scam center in Cambodia. These attempts ranged from offering payments for fake likes to enlisting others into a rent-a-scooter pyramid scheme, or luring people to invest in cryptocurrency. As OpenAI reported, the scammers used ChatGPT to generate the initial text message containing a link to a WhatsApp chat, and then quickly directed the target to Telegram where they were assigned a task of liking videos on TikTok. The scammers attempted to build trust in their scheme by sharing how much the target has already ‘earned’ in theory, before asking them to deposit money into a crypto account as the next task.
How do you recognize these scams and stay safe? We partnered with internet safety expert and ethical hacker Rachel Tobac to share how scammers may target people – and how to avoid them.
New WhatsApp Anti-Scam Tools
In addition to disrupting scam centers, WhatsApp is constantly rolling out new features to help protect people on our apps from known scam tactics at scale.
Group messaging: We’re launching a new safety overview that we’ll show you when someone who is not in your contacts adds you to a new WhatsApp group you may not recognize. It will include key information about the group and tips to stay safe. From there, you can exit the group without ever having to look at the chat. And if you think you might recognize the group after seeing the safety overview, you can choose to see the chat for more context. Regardless, notifications from the group will be silenced until you mark that you want to stay.
Individual messaging: Additionally, scammers may attempt to first initiate contact with you elsewhere on the internet before asking to message them on private messengers like WhatsApp. To protect against this tactic, we continue to test new approaches to alerting people to pause before engaging. For example, we’re exploring ways to caution you when you start a chat with someone not in your contacts by showing you additional context about who you’re messaging so you can make an informed decision.
Tips to Avoid Scams in Private Messaging
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. 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.
We encourage you to pause, question, and verify, before responding to a suspicious or unusual message, especially if it’s from a number you don’t know promising fast money:
- PAUSE: Take time before you respond. Think about whether this is a number you recognize, or whether it reads like a legitimate ask.
- QUESTION: Does this request make sense? Does it seem too good to be true? Are they asking you to send money, gift cards or PIN codes? Are they offering unrealistically high pay for a few hours of work? Are they rushing you into taking action? These might be signs of a scam.
- VERIFY: If they’re claiming to be a friend or family member, make sure that they are who they say they are by contacting that friend directly – ideally using another method of communication. For example, if they messaged you on WhatsApp, call them on their phone – or if they sent you an SMS, give them a WhatsApp call using the phone number you know is theirs.