'How are scammers identifying numbers on WhatsApp?' IT minister raises pointed questions on international call scam

WhatsApp international calls scam has affected thousands of users across India. IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has sent a notice to the Meta-owned messaging platform stating that the onus of ensuring user safety lies with digital platforms. The minister further said that the digital platforms will have to respond to such instances of alleged misuse or alleged breach of users’ privacy.

WhatsApp international calls spam

It was recently reported by many WhatsApp users that they are getting spam calls on WhatsApp from international numbers. These numbers were from Indonesia (+62), Vietnam (+84), Malaysia (+60), Kenya (+254) and Ethiopia (+251).

At an event hosted by the Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI), the IT Minister stated, “The Ministry is taking note of it, they will send them a notice.”

The IT Minister further said that the government will respond to every alleged misuse or alleged breach of privacy. He revealed that the government is mulling over the guidelines for preloaded apps. WhatsApp or any other platform needs to pay attention if they are witnessing any issue of spam.

One of the major questions that the minister brought up was how these scammers are getting access to WhatsApp numbers. In a statement to PTI, he said, “How are they able to identify which numbers are on WhatsApp... are they doing it blindly?... is it some database they have got? If there is a database it is a violation of privacy, or if not are they are doing it through a bot... sending messages to random numbers... But that is certainly something platforms will be asked to look at.”

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WhatsApp’s response to international calls spam

The latest statement by WhatsApp read:

Protecting the privacy and security of users is fundamental to Meta and to WhatsApp. 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.

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 is 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.  

Therefore, 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 Audio Leak Case

WhatsApp is being questioned for the app’s microphone usage, not just for international scam calls. This came to light after a Twitter engineer reported that WhatsApp was using his Pixel phone’s microphone while he was sleeping.

In response, WhatsApp pointed finger at Android, claiming that a bug is causing mis-atribution on the privacy dashboard. As per the official statement, “We believe this is a bug on Android that misattributes information in their Privacy Dashboard and have asked Google to investigate and remediate.”

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