WhatsApp on Tuesday announced a set of safety features designed to help users spot and avoid scams across both group and individual chats, saying it has banned more than 6.8 million accounts tied to criminal scam centres that target people worldwide.
The Meta-owned messaging service said the new features are intended to give users more context before they engage, particularly when they are added to groups or begin conversations with people who are not in their contacts.
The company also described a coordinated enforcement action, undertaken with OpenAI, that disrupted scam activity traced to a fraud operation in Cambodia.
“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,” the company stated.
Safety overview
For group chats, WhatsApp is introducing a safety overview that appears when someone outside your contacts adds you to a group you don’t recognise.
The overview provides key information about the group, for example, whether the person who added you is in your contact list and whether any other group members are your contacts, plus tips to stay safe.
Users who want more context can view the chat; otherwise, notifications from the group will remain muted until they explicitly opt to stay.
The measure is designed to reduce surprise additions to large or malicious groups and to limit the spread of fraudulent links or social engineering attempts through mass invites.
- On individual chats, WhatsApp said scammers often begin conversations elsewhere on the internet and then move targets to private messaging.
- To counter this, the app is testing ways to surface additional context when a user starts a chat with someone who is not in their address book, giving people a chance to pause and assess the legitimacy of the contact before responding.
Collaboration with OpenAI
WhatsApp also shared details of an enforcement effort that involved collaboration with OpenAI. The company said scammers used ChatGPT to generate initial outreach messages linking victims to WhatsApp chats, then redirected them to other platforms such as Telegram to complete the scam.
Reported schemes ranged from fake “earnings” tasks and pyramid-style rent-a-scooter operations to cryptocurrency investment ruses that lured victims into depositing funds.
- In its blog post, WhatsApp described how the fraudsters tried to build trust by showing fabricated earnings before asking targets to move money into crypto accounts — a classic escalation pattern that moves victims from low-risk tasks to real financial transfers.
- WhatsApp reminded users of basic scam-avoidance steps: take time to review messages before responding, question requests that pressure you to act quickly, and verify the identity of anyone claiming to be a friend or family member through another channel.
- The company’s new contextual prompts are intended to reinforce those behaviours by making it easier to spot red flags early.
WhatsApp said the safety tools are being rolled out gradually as tests continue, and the company will likely refine the features based on user feedback and evolving fraud patterns.
