Messaging service platform, WhatsApp, has banned over 6.8 million accounts tied to criminal scam activities that target people worldwide. The Meta-owned platform equally said it had introduced a set of safety features designed to help users spot and avoid scams in both group and individual chats.

According to WhatsApp, the new features were intended to give users more context before they engage, particularly when they are added to groups or begin conversations with people who are not in their contacts.

“In the first six months of this year, as part of our ongoing proactive work to protect people from scams, WhatsApp detected and banned over 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centres. Based on our investigative insights into the latest enforcement efforts, we proactively detected and took down accounts before scam centres were able to operationalise them,” the tech firm’s website showed.

The company also described a coordinated enforcement action, undertaken with OpenAI, that disrupted scam activity traced to a fraud operation in Cambodia.

Further on safety, it explained that it would introduce a safety overview that would appear when someone outside one’s contacts adds you to a group you don’t recognise.

WhatsApp said the measure was designed to reduce surprise additions to large or malicious groups and to limit the spread of fraudulent links or social engineering attempts through mass invites.

On individual chats, WhatsApp said scammers often begin conversations elsewhere on the Internet and then move targets to private messaging.