‘Jamtara Global’: Indian WhatsApp users flooded with spam calls

NEW DELHI: Millions of WhatsApp users in India have been left baffled at the amount of international spam calls they have been receiving in the last couple of days, leaving many at the risk of financial loss.

These spam calls with international numbers, mostly from African and Southeast Asian countries, along with fake messages from unknown users, have flooded WhatsApp and Indians have nowhere to go but Twitter to share their ordeal.

Meta-owned WhatsApp has close to 500 million users in India.

“What is happening with WhatsApp? So much spam. So much,” Gaurav Munjal, Founder, Unacademy Group, posted on Tuesday.

“WhatsApp Business was a big blunder. Brian Acton (WhatsApp Co-founder) has been proved right,” tweeted Sourabh Mathur, an entrepreneur.

Although the mobile numbers show country codes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Ethiopia, it is not necessary that these calls are actually coming from these countries.

Most of these calls start with +251 (Ethiopia), +62 (Indonesia), +254 (Kenya), +84 (Vietnam) and other countries.

Ray Stings @Purba_Ray tweeted: “I keep getting missed calls on WhatsApp from unknown numbers from different parts of the world every single day. It’s so bad, I have to keep my phone on silent”. WhatsApp was yet to comment on the growing fake spam calls on its platform.

“Same here. Seems to be an epidemic. @whatsapp needs to allow us to choose to get calls from contacts only,” posted Shivam Vij, New Delhi-based independent journalist.

Another affected WhatsApp user said: “I get that (scam calls) at 5 in the morning. Almost my daily morning alarms now”.

“That’s JAMTARA GLOBAL, for you,” posted another. Another scam that is being reported in India is that of receiving job offers via WhatsApp messages. (IANS)

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