WhatsApp launches ‘Safety Overview’ tool; bans 6.8 mn accounts linked to scam centres 

WhatsApp has launched a new ‘safety overview’, which will alert a user when someone not in their contact adds them to a new WhatsApp group that they may not recognise, as the Meta messaging platform intensified its crackdown on scams and frauds.

The safety overview will contain key information about the said group and tips to stay safe, it said.

“From there, you can exit the group without ever having to look at the chat. And if you think you might recognise the group after seeing the safety overview, you can choose to see the chat for more context,” according to WhatsApp.

And notifications from the group will be silenced until the user marks that they wish to stay.

Meta’s messaging platform further said it is exploring ways to caution users when they start a chat with someone not in their contacts by providing more information about the person they are messaging. This, it hopes, will enable informed decisions.

WhatsApp said it also takes down attempts by criminal scam centres, often fuelled by forced labour and operated by organised crime primarily in South East Asia.

In the first six months this year, WhatsApp and Meta’s security teams detected and banned over 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centres.

“Based on our investigative insights into the latest enforcement efforts, we proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centres were able to operationalise them,” it said.

Citing an instance of such crackdown, it said recently WhatsApp, Meta and OpenAI disrupted efforts that had links to a criminal scam centre in Cambodia.

These attempts ranged from offering payments for fake likes to enlisting others into a rent-a-scooter pyramid scheme, and 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,” it said.