Meta says WhatsApp has taken down 6.8 million accounts linked to scammers targeting people around the world in the first half of this year.
The social media giant said many were tied to scam centers run by organised criminals in South East Asia, who often used forced labor in their operations.
Meta made the announcement as WhatsApp rolled out new anti-scam measures to alert users to potential fraudulent activity, such as a user being added to a group chat by someone not in their contacts list.
The crackdown targets an increasingly common tactic in which criminals hijack WhatsApp accounts or add users to group chats promoting fake investment schemes and other scams.
Meta said WhatsApp proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centers were able to operationalize them.
In one case, WhatsApp worked with Meta and ChatGPT-developer OpenAI to disrupt scams linked to a Cambodian criminal group that offered cash for likes on social media posts to promote a fake rent-a-scooter pyramid scheme.
It said scammers had used ChatGPT to create the instructions issued to potential victims.
