Meta Blocks 6.8 Million WhatsApp Scam Accounts, Adds New Safety Tools

Meta Platforms said it has disabled more than 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts tied to criminal scam centers during the first half of 2025, underscoring the scale of fraud networks that use the messaging service to target victims worldwide. To make such operations harder, WhatsApp is rolling out a “safety overview” that appears when a user is added to a group by someone outside their contacts. The screen shows who created the group, how many participants it has and reminds users they can leave before seeing any messages. Notifications from the group stay muted until the user chooses to remain. The company is also testing warnings for one-to-one chats, giving additional context when a person receives a message from an unknown number—an attempt to stop scammers who initiate contact on other platforms before shifting conversations to WhatsApp. Meta said its takedown effort included work with OpenAI that helped trace and dismantle a Cambodia-based operation using generative-AI text and multi-platform “task” scams that lured people into cryptocurrency deposits. WhatsApp said it will keep expanding automated detection and user-facing tools as social-media fraud grows more sophisticated.