WhatsApp says it has taken down 6.8 million accounts linked to scammers targeting people around the world in the first half of this year. Many were tied to scam centres run by organised criminals in South East Asia, who often used forced labour in their operations, the Meta-owned messaging platform says.

The company announced that it took down over 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts linked to criminal scam centers targeting people around the world.

In a post, the Meta-owned service says it took down more than 6.8 million accounts linked to scam networks primarily based in Southeast Asia. WhatsApp said that many of them are driven by cryptocurrency investment scams and pyramid schemes, and that some use ChatGPT to generate text and links that may send users to other apps.