After India's tough stance, WhatsApp says it will cut down on international spam calls

With WhatsApp users in India facing growing menace of International scam calls in recent days, the US based company has said it has rolled out back-end fixes to address the issue.

"International scam calls are a new way that bad actors have adopted. We have ramped up its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems to bring down such incidents significantly. Our new enforcement will reduce the current calling rate by at least 50 per cent," the Meta owned company said.

The US based company reacted a day after Union Minister of State For Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar's statement saying that the government took note of the WhatsApp spam calls and will send notice to the company on the issue.

Also Read | Government to send notice to Whatsapp on international spam call issue

"I have said repeatedly that openness, trust, safety and accountability are the responsibility of platforms who deliver to digital nagriks," Chandrasekhar said on Thursday.

Recently, WhatsApp users in India have been flooded with international spam calls. The maximum calls originated from Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia,Kenya and Ethiopia.

“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,” said the company’s spokesperson.

WhatsApp said that users’ privacy is fundamental to Meta and to WhatsApp. The company also asserted that its services are end-to-end encrypted and it is fully aligned with the government’s goal of keeping users safe.