up to 80% of fraudulent calls are made via WhatsApp – Kommersant

The head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, said that 70-80% of fraudulent calls are made from the WhatsApp messenger (owned by Meta, recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation and banned). He also announced significant progress against such calls in 2023. Work in this direction is carried out with telecom operators.

“The joint work that we are carrying out, the responsibility for passing traffic from substitution numbers – this gives an effect. We see that 70–80% of fraudulent calls are made not from the usual numbering, but from WhatsApp,” Mr. Shadayev said during the plenary session “Telecom in search of a way out: challenges and prospects” of the XIX annual forum of telecom operators on the Vedomosti site (quote from the Telegram channel “Ether of the Ministry of Digital Development”).

The number of fraudulent calls that go on a regular phone has decreased significantly, the minister said. He also announced an agreement with operators on methods of combating spam calls, promising that this year there will be an order of magnitude fewer such calls.

Messengers have become much more profitable for scammers than other methods of communication, noted experts in mid-2022. Malefactors began to steal money of Russians more often after calls in instant messengers, contacting a potential victim by means of the robot.

In March 2023, it became known that WhatsApp tests a new feature to protect users from calls from spammers and scammers. Then it was tested only for smartphones on the Android operating system.

Maria Fedotova