News WhatsApp Bans 8M+ Indian Accounts: Why Scams Sparked the Crackdown

[6pack]

Source: https://reportboom.com/whatsapp-bans-8m-indian-accounts-why-scams-sparked-the-crackdown/

Imagine waking up to find your favorite messaging app kicking out millions of users. That’s exactly what happened in August 2024, when WhatsApp, India’s go-to social platform, banned 8.45 million accounts. Meta, the app’s parent company, spilled the tea in its latest Transparency Report: fraud and shady behavior were running wild, and they weren’t having it.

This wasn’t a random purge. Over 1.6 million accounts got the boot before anyone complained—thanks to Meta’s beefed-up monitoring. Another 1.66 million were zapped instantly for major rule-breaking, while the rest fell after deeper digging. It’s all tied to India’s strict Information Technology Act (Sections 4(1)(d) and 3A(7)), which WhatsApp’s playing by to keep things legit.
Why Were These Accounts Banned?

So, what got these accounts in hot water? WhatsApp laid it out plain and simple:

Breaking the Rules: Spamming your group chat with fake deals? Sharing sketchy links? That’s a fast track to a ban.
Illegal Stuff: Some accounts were caught in shady dealings that broke local laws—think scams or worse.
User Gripes: Ever reported a creepy message? Tons of users did, flagging harassment and abuse that fueled this crackdown.

Take Priya, a Delhi college student I heard about through a friend. She kept getting “win a free iPhone” texts from random numbers. Annoyed, she hit “report”—and boom, one less scammer on WhatsApp. Multiply that by millions, and you’ve got this ban wave.

Start reporting unwanted unsolicited messages.

 

[Futureized]

Reporting same number a few hundred times from people who received messages can cause a block ?
What about daily messages from friends/relatives/groups ?

How WhatsApps know content of messages if it's end to end encrypted?

 

[bssunilreddy]

Reporting same number a few hundred times from people who received messages can cause a block ?
What about daily messages from friends/relatives/groups ?

How WhatsApps know content of messages if it's end to end encrypted?

There is no such thing as end to end encryption anywhere like facebook, whatsapp, Instagram etc. Its all a gimmick because all companies have signed NDAs with India or US that they will provide all their data to RAW & NIA or CIA & NSA. Accordingly almost all EU countries have taken NDAs from above said companies like us. They just put it there as to create an illusion just to sell their product that's all.

 

[6pack]

Reporting same number a few hundred times from people who received messages can cause a block ?
What about daily messages from friends/relatives/groups ?

How WhatsApps know content of messages if it's end to end encrypted?

This is just a theory - Messages are end to end encrypted but they have a key to read your message. Like your message from your device to WA server and from WA server to another device is encrypted. They read the message on their server using AI tools. If one person flags a message, the AI copies that message you flagged and matches it with messages in the senders WA. If they find a lot of similar messages they ban such spammers if sender is not in contact list of receiver.

What about daily messages from friends/relatives/groups ?
I don't think such messages are flagged as spam since they are sending it to a group and the sender and receiver are both in same group and also in known contact list.

 

[DBot]

Like your message from your device to WA server and from WA server to another device is encrypted.

Don't think that's how E2E works. Sender encrypts the message using receiver's public key and the receiver holds the private key to decrypt the message of the sender.
If the generated private key is sent to WhatsApp then it's a breach of trust.

When you report spam, last few messages are forwarded to WhatsApp. I'm assuming they'll go through these messages to find spams.