WhatsApp, owned by Meta, has deleted over 6.8 million accounts in the first half of this year due to their links with sophisticated scam operations targeting users globally. Many of these scams were traced to organized criminal centers in Southeast Asia, which often utilize forced labor.

• WhatsApp proactively detected and removed 6.8 million scam-linked accounts between January and June 2024.
• The primary organization involved is Meta (parent company of WhatsApp), and the scams originated from criminal centers in Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Cambodia, and Thailand.
• One notable instance involved WhatsApp, Meta, and ChatGPT-developer OpenAI disrupting a Cambodian criminal group that used ChatGPT to create instructions for victims in a fake rent-a-scooter pyramid scheme.