'We have ramped up our Artificial Intelligence...' WhatsApp on Centre's red-flag on international scam calls

By Vipin Vijayan | First Published May 12, 2023, 12:34 PM IST

"Bad actors find different ways to scam users. International scam calls are a new way that bad actors have recently adopted. Our new enforcement will reduce the current calling rate by at least 50% and we expect to be able to control the current incidence effectively," WhatsApp said.

Users are at the heart of everything we do and we are fully aligned with the Government's goal of keeping users safe, WhatsApp has said in response to Indian government's call to send notice to WhatsApp on International scam calls.

"Protecting the privacy and security of users is fundamental to Meta and to WhatsApp. Our users are at the heart of everything we do and we are fully aligned with the Government's goal of keeping users safe. WhatsApp is a leader among end-to-end encrypted services in protecting user safety," a WhatsApp spokesman said.

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"We continue to provide several safety tools within WhatsApp like Block and Report, consistently build user safety education and awareness, as well as, proactively weed out bad-actors from our platform. However, bad actors find different ways to scam users. International scam calls is a new way that bad actors have recently adopted. By giving a missed call, they lead curious users to call or message back only to get scammed," the spokesman added.

"Therefore, we have quickly ramped up our AI & ML systems to bring down such incidents significantly. Our new enforcement will reduce the current calling rate by at least 50% and we expect to be able to control the current incidence effectively. We will continue to work relentlessly towards ensuring a safe experience for our users," the spokesman further said.

WhatsApp users in India have reported a massive surge in incoming international spam calls over the past few days. Many users complained on Twitter that a major chunk of these spam calls had country codes belonging to Indonesia (+62), Vietnam (+84), Malaysia (+60), Kenya (+254) and Ethiopia (+251).

According to a Statista report, there are over 487 million WhatsApp users in India, making it the biggest market for the company. WhatsApp has been under scrutiny in India over various issues. In October last year, the Meta-owned messaging app saw a two-hour service disruption, prompting the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to ask the platform to share reasons for the disruption.

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar had on Wednesday said that the government would investigate a claim that WhatsApp accessed the microphone of smartphone users while the phone was not in use. This followed a claim that WhatsApp accessed a user's microphone while he was sleeping.

"WhatsApp has been using the microphone in the background, while I was asleep and since I woke up at 6 AM," Foad Dabiri, an engineering director at Twitter said on Saturday. "What's going on?"

Replying to Dabiri's tweet, Chandrasekhar said, "This is an unacceptable breach and violation of privacy. We will be examining this immediately and will act on any violation of privacy even as the new Digital Personal Data Protection bill is being readied." WhatsApp responded saying it has been in touch with the Twitter engineer over the last 24 hours, who posted an issue with his Pixel phone and WhatsApp.

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