• Posted by: Eng. Donya Bino
• January 29, 2026

Top Countries Hit by WhatsApp & Telegram Spam Groups

Spam groups (phishing, investment scams, romance bait, ClickFix, gift-card fraud, banking trojan droppers) disproportionately target countries with very high WhatsApp and Telegram penetration, large young populations active on messaging, and widespread use of these apps for payments, business, and daily communication.

Here are the most affected countries based on public threat reports, CERT alerts, cybersecurity vendor telemetry (Group-IB, Kaspersky, ESET, Check Point, Trend Micro), and platform transparency data:
1. India being the largest volume of spam groups as well as phishing campaigns are due to the following; it has 500m+ users on WhatsApp (tg is huge in business & crypto use), a lot of people with low digital literacy in some sectors, UPI-linked scams are very successful, includes job offers (fake), loans or credit card phishing, crypto pump and dump groups, and OTP fraud.

2. Brazil Extremely high per-capita impact. Reasons: WhatsApp is the de-facto communication + payment app (Pix integration), very active banking trojan scene (Astaroth, Ghimob, Mekotio derivatives). Dominant spam: auto-spreading banking trojans via WhatsApp groups, fake refund / boleto scams, Pix hijacking.

3. Indonesia Rapid growth in 2025–2026. Reasons: 200M+ WhatsApp users, huge Telegram crypto/investment community, many new-to-smartphone users. Dominant spam: investment scams, romance + crypto “pig butchering”, fake government aid messages.

4. Jordan & Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq) Jordan specifically sees very high spam density due to high WhatsApp group usage for family/business, many public/invite-link groups. Regional pattern: fake job offers (especially Gulf work visas), romance scams, ClickFix-style commands, gift-card refund hybrids. Telegram spam heavy in crypto/trading channels.

5. Mexico and Latin America (Colombia, Argentina and Peru) show a similar pattern to Brazil. WhatsApp dominates everyday life as well as payment processing. The main forms of spam are banking trojans (many of which originated from Brazilian families in the South), fake government benefits, and phishing for jobs and loans. 

6. Nigeria and West Africa primarily use Telegram as their main form of communication for investment and crypto scams. In addition to Telegram though, WhatsApp has a heavy mixture of romance and “inheritance” scams. There is a very large amount of money mules being recruited through fake job advertisements.

7. Philippines Fast-growing in 2025–2026. Dominant spam: job offers (overseas work scams), romance + investment fraud, fake remittance alerts.

Quick Summary Ranking 
1. India (sheer volume)
2. Brazil (per-capita severity + banking trojans)
3. Indonesia
4. Mexico
5. Jordan + broader Middle East
6. Nigeria
7. Philippines and Colombia

Reasons Why they are Hit Hardest
1. Usage of WhatsApp and Telegram is incredibly high for nearly all aspects of communication (chatting, business, making payments, family groups).
2. Large numbers of public/invite-link groups.
3. Widespread trust in messages from “friends” or “known groups”.
4. Many individuals do not understand how to utilize digital security effectively.
5. Economic hardship can make fraud on people's emotions with things like investment, loan and romance fraud.

Tips for protection
1.  Each Group has to be private and require an Admin approval of new members before acceptance into that Group.
2.  Replace public invite links to Groups with private invites and make new public invite links annually or as needed.
3.  Mute any notification coming from someone that you do not know.
4.  Do not trust any voice or video requests for money, codes or help, use the same number you have on file or call back on the number of record.
5.  Have a separate code word with Family for authentication.
6.  Report spam to all platforms immediately and actively will cause those platforms to take action faster on the reported accounts.