Every day criminal scammers attempt to play on people\u2019s economic anxiety to <\/span>trick people<\/span><\/a> with too-good-to-be-true offers and pyramid schemes to earn quick money. <\/span>As part of our <\/span>ongoing<\/span><\/a> efforts to protect people from scams, we\u2019re 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the most prolific <\/span>sources<\/span><\/a> of scams are criminal scam centers, often fueled by forced labor and operated by organized crime primarily in <\/span>Southeast Asia<\/span><\/a>. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n These scam centers typically run many scam campaigns at once \u2013 from cryptocurrency investments to pyramid schemes. <\/span>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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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 <\/span>ensure that any one service has only a limited view into the entire scam, <\/span>making it more challenging to detect.<\/span><\/p>\n 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 <\/span>reported<\/span><\/a>, 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 \u2018earned\u2019 in theory, before asking them to deposit money into a crypto account as the next task.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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 \u2013 and how to avoid them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTaking Action Against Scammers<\/h2>\n
How Scammers Operate<\/h2>\n
Working with Others to Protect People<\/h2>\n
New WhatsApp Anti-Scam Tools<\/h2>\n
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