Deploying AI tools to reduce international scam calls by 50%: WhatsApp

Meta-owned messenger app WhatsApp on Thursday said it has ramped up its AI & ML systems to reduce the international scam calls by at least 50 per cent. This was in response to the government’s call to issue a notice to the platform in the matter.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and IT earlier in the day said the ministry of Electronics and Information Technology may send a notice to WhatsApp about the user harm created by international scam calls.

Indian WhatsApp users have witnessed rising spam calls from international numbers over the past few days. Majority of these spam calls have country codes originating to countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.

“The platforms are responsible to ensure the safety and trust of those who use them. In the case of international scam calls, the main problem we are looking at is how these numbers get out (to the scammers) and how they are able to identify which numbers are on WhatsApp. If it is some database they have got, we will need to ask the platforms to look at the possible breach of privacy,” the minister said, adding that the ministry may issue a notice to the intermediary per the laws of India.

WhatsApp responded to the minister’s comments in a statement saying protecting the privacy and security of users is fundamental to Meta and to WhatsApp.

“We continue to provide several safety tools within WhatsApp like Block & 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 are 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,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson.  

The spokesperson further said “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 per cent 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."

WhatsApp also recently came at the centre of a debate about an alleged privacy breach after a Twitter engineer claimed that the messaging app accessed the microphone of his smartphone when it was not in use. The ‘end-to-end encrypted’ messaging app has an estimated 500 million users in India.

WhatsApp spokesperson added: "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.