WhatsApp Cracks Down, Bans 6.8M Scam Accounts

A new press release from Meta indicates that WhatsApp has spent the first half of 2025 taking out some 6.8 million scam accounts. While that’s an eye-popping number, it is commensurate with an explosion of social media fraud that has made it one of the most popular (and lucrative) forms of cyber crime in recent years.

Other platforms are likely seeing similar numbers of scam accounts, and user awareness of the heightened activity and risk is more important than ever. The most dangerous scam accounts are operated by large organized crime rings that move scams through several different platforms before asking for a payment, and prey on the trusted contacts of users after credentials are obtained via infostealers or data dumps from high-profile breaches.

Social media scam accounts surge to a billion-dollar enterprise

The WhatsApp announcement comes along with the introduction of new safety features meant to help users detect scams in the early stages. These include new warnings and ways to evaluate unfamiliar accounts, all aimed at encouraging users to “pause, question, and verify” when approached by other users that they seemingly know or that may be promising things that are too good to be true.

All of this comes as social media fraud has leapt from a global industry of only about $20 million 10 years ago to nearly $2 billion at present. The biggest gains have come in the last few years, as generative AI tools have become available that make messaging and faking voices and photos much easier. And while operators of scam accounts are not necessarily traditional hackers, they are usually quick to take advantage of credentials leaked in data breaches or may purchase information captured by infostealer malware.

SE Asian cyber crime rings drive most of WhatsApp fraud

Meta named organized crime rings in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand as the main players behind the scam accounts that it removed from the platform this year. This has been another emerging pattern in recent years, as crime groups recruit people who believe they are taking on legitimate data entry or customer service roles and are then sometimes kept in place with force or threats. Scam accounts also target remote job seekers by promising simple work leaving “likes” on posts, which then escalates to a crypto scheme or an attempt to harvest sensitive financial information.

WhatsApp warns that scam accounts rarely attempt to conduct the entirety of the scam on the platform. It is used more for initial contact or perhaps a middle “getting to know you” phase, with the end result usually either a request for sensitive personal information somewhere else or direction to make an off-site crypto payment of some kind. Telegram and TikTok seem to be popular destinations to shift to in order to complete scams.

The top social media scams to watch out for include these various employment schemes as well as fake storefronts, romance scams and pyramid schemes. Account takeovers can also involve posing as friends or family, sometimes with deepfake audio used to enhance the scam.