Meta Platforms said it has deleted more than 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts since January that investigators linked to organised scam operations, many of them run out of Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. The takedown, carried out in the first six months of 2025, targeted so-called “pig-butchering” rings that lure victims into bogus cryptocurrency and investment schemes. The company said its security team, working with OpenAI, detected and removed the accounts before the networks could be fully activated. Meta has recently cited forced-labour scam centres in Southeast Asia as among the most prolific sources of online fraud and said the latest sweep is part of a broader, continuing campaign against such groups. Alongside the enforcement action, WhatsApp is rolling out additional safeguards. A new “Safety Overview” appears when users are added to a group by someone outside their contacts, and test alerts now prompt extra scrutiny when messaging unknown numbers. Both tools aim to give users more context and time to exit suspicious conversations silently. The push comes amid mounting pressure on social-media platforms to curb fraud. The FBI estimates consumers lost a record US$9.3 billion to online scams in 2024, including about US$3.9 billion tied to cryptocurrency swindles. Critics contend that Meta and its peers must do more, arguing their advertising models still profit from malicious actors, but the company says proactive detection is reducing scam reach at scale.