WhatsApp Bans 2 Million Fake Accounts Per Month

Whatsapp bans up to two million accounts from its messaging platform. The company said up to 20 percent of the accounts that are problematic are without human intervention and user report at the time of registration.

The company executives have mentioned during a press briefing in New Delhi on the 7th of February 2019 that they have built a machine learning system through which they detect and sieve out users that participate in unsuitable actions like, sending bulk messages or creating multiple accounts with the sole aim of spreading fake or questionable contents across the platform. It has been revealed by VentureBeat that the company uses a bit of specific signals and AI to detect these users since phishing is a big issue for the company.

The company said “As with any communications platform, sometimes people attempt to exploit our service. Some may want to distribute click-bait links designed to capture personal information, while others want to promote an idea. Regardless of the intent, automated and bulk messaging violates our terms of service, and one of our priorities is to prevent and stop this kind of abuse.”

Matt Jones, a software engineer at WhatsApp said the company has identified various ways people abuse the platform, including through special software that allows users to run multiple instances of different WhatsApp accounts on the same computer. The company also found special devices that support dozens of SIM cards, he said.

This ban connects with the fact that India is heading into its biggest election, the country being one of WhatsApp’s largest market has scrutinized the company severally on fake contents spread through its platform. In other to counter violence and the likes incited on the platform that has cost dozens of life from spreading of fake news, the company has earlier enforced a limit on the number of texts that can be forwarded to other users.

Whatsapp according to survey is Facebook’s most popular service.