Overview

• WhatsApp’s new safety overview interstitial displays group creation date, inviter identity and member count before users join chats from unknown contacts, muting notifications until they confirm membership.
• A pilot feature will warn users in individual chats when they start conversations with numbers not in their contacts by providing extra context to encourage pause and verification.
• Between January and June 2025, WhatsApp detected and banned more than 6.8 million accounts linked to organized scam centers before they could be deployed.
• Most banned accounts were tied to Southeast Asia–based criminal centers using forced labor and cycling victims through platforms like Telegram and TikTok to avoid detection.
• WhatsApp and Meta, in collaboration with OpenAI and fraud authorities, dismantled a Cambodia-based scam network that used ChatGPT-generated messages to lure victims across multiple apps.