Many of the accounts were linked to criminal groups operating in South East Asia, the social media giant said.

WhatsApp detected and banned more than 6.8 million accounts linked to scam centers, most of them in Southeast Asia, according to Meta. WhatsApp and Meta worked with OpenAI to disrupt a scam traced to Cambodia that used ChatGPT to generate text messages containing a link to a WhatsApp chat to hook victims, according to the tech firms.

Meta on Tuesday said it shut nearly seven million WhatsApp accounts linked to scammers in the first half of this year and is ramping up safeguards against such schemes.WhatsApp detected and banned more than 6.