WhatsApp users raised concerns about international spam calls in recent times. The instant messaging platform has introduced back-end updates to tackle such calls, a report by TechCrunch has revealed.
This comes after the Meta-owned platform dismissed a Twitter engineer’s allegation that it is accessing his device’s microphone in the background.
Many users reportedly received malicious calls from phone numbers with international codes from countries, such as Ethiopia (+251), Indonesia (+62), Kenya (+254), Malaysia (+60), and Vietnam (+84). In most cases, the scammers promoted fraudulent job offers and often asked users to connect through other messaging platforms, such as Telegram.
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The Meta-owned messaging platform announced that its AL and ML systems were ramped up to bring down spam call incidents. Stressing that the platform is end-to-end encrypted providing user safety, a WhatsApp spokesperson said, “We continue to provide several safety tools within WhatsApp like Block & Report, consistently build user safety education and awareness, as well as proactively weed out bad actors from our platform.”
The spokesperson told TechCrunch, “International scam calls are a new way that bad actors have recently adopted.” In addition, WhatsApp users can disable the visibility of personal information to unknown contacts, and block and report malicious contacts.
The instant messaging platform is compatible with Wear OS, enabling users to access the instant messaging platform on a smartwatch.
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Published on May 15, 2023
