Users have also been advised to take advantage of the app’s privacy controls and keep personal details visible to only their contacts to help safeguard their accounts…reports Asian Lite News
Millions of WhatsApp users in India have been left baffled at the amount of international spam calls they have been receiving in the last couple of days, leaving many at the risk of financial loss.
These spam calls with international numbers, mostly from African and Southeast Asian countries, along with fake messages from unknown users, have flooded WhatsApp and Indians have nowhere to go but Twitter to share their ordeal.
Meta-owned WhatsApp has close to 500 million users in India.
Although the mobile numbers show country codes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Ethiopia, it is not necessary that these calls are actually coming from these countries. Most of these calls start with +251 (Ethiopia), +62 (Indonesia), +254 (Kenya), +84 (Vietnam) and other countries.
Responding to the concerns, WhatsApp issued a statement and advised users to immediately block and report suspicious accounts so that required action can be taken.
”At WhatsApp, the safety of our users is at the core of everything we do and we have devoted efforts to empower users with resources and tools that equip them to safeguard themselves from scams. WhatsApp is an industry leader in preventing abuse, among end-to-end encrypted messaging services and over the years we have made significant product investments and launched user awareness campaigns that empower users to stay safe. Blocking and Reporting suspicious messages/ calls is an important step to effectively combat scams and when users receive calls from unknown international or domestic phone numbers.” WhatsApp said in a statement.
Users have also been advised to take advantage of the app’s privacy controls and keep personal details visible to only their contacts to help safeguard their accounts.
”Additionally, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts, and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. Our monthly user safety report that we publish in accordance with the IT Rules 2021, contains details of the user complaints received and the corresponding action taken by WhatsApp, as well as WhatsApp’s own preventive actions to combat abuse on our platform. As captured in the latest Monthly Report, WhatsApp banned over 4.7 million accounts in the month of March alone,” the statement added.
The company also stated that it has launched a safety campaign “Stay safe with WhatsApp” to educate users about its in-built product features and safety tools like Two-Step Verification, Block and Report, and Privacy controls, as safeguards to help protect users from online scams, frauds, and account compromising threats.
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