kakaotalk

ⓘ Starting from the second half of 2025, the “Talk Profile” area has been moved under the Posts and Comments service’s metrics, reflecting its strengthened characteristics. Accordingly, Talk Profile data is no longer included in the General Chat metrics of this report; the corresponding figures are available in the Enforcement > Posts and Comments report.

In the second half of 2025, approximately 166K accounts were subject to service restrictions in the General Chat service, an increase of approximately 13% compared to the previous half. By reason, Fraud and Impersonation accounted for the largest share at 77.2%, followed by Illegal Spam, Including Gambling at 8.6%, Obscene・Sexual Behavior at 5.2%, Illegal Goods and Services at 4.9%, and Investment Advising and Related Policy Violations at 4.2%.

The number of accounts restricted for Fraud and Impersonation increased by approximately 30% compared to the previous half. This reflects not merely a numerical increase but a structural shift in scam tactics. While the first half was dominated by commercial-approach spam — such as fake shopping offers and counterfeit product sales — the second half saw a rapid spread of context-of-life impersonations disguised as everyday relationships such as neighbors, hobbies, and academies. Because these approaches are perceived in familiar contexts, user vigilance tends to drop, and cases of being redirected to external platforms after the initial conversation, or being asked for money once trust is established, have also been observed.

The number of accounts restricted for Illegal Spam, Including Gambling decreased by approximately 45% compared to the previous half. Kakao operates a system that identifies similar patterns from a small number of reported cases and rapidly blocks accounts receiving the same or similar reports thereafter, and applies temporary message-sending restrictions to accounts that accumulate reports. This response has helped reduce both further spread and follow-up reports. That said, toward year-end, new gambling promotion attempts such as live-casino platform promotions and redirects to external messengers were observed to increase again.

The number of accounts restricted under Investment Advising and Related Policy Violations decreased by approximately 46% compared to the previous half. Typical leading-room recruitment tactics — such as stock buying-price/target-price tips and prompts to add as a friend — are analyzed to have decreased rapidly thanks to the strengthened response policy implemented from the second half of 2024 and the report-based blocking system. However, toward the end of the half, some variant tactics were also observed, including campaigns using events or trial credits as bait, redirects to external messengers, and requests to install external HTS programs.

The number of accounts restricted under Illegal Goods and Services increased by approximately 180% compared to the previous half. This was driven by the June 2025 revision of the Operation Policy, which expanded the scope of enforcement to include illegal debt collection, illegal lending and money lending, and illegal pharmaceutical sales. In particular, "Illegal Lending and Debt Collection" accounted for the largest share within this category at 8,083 accounts restricted; detections were concentrated in July immediately after the policy took effect, and gradually stabilized as the report-based response system settled in. The main tactic of this category is a high-risk pattern that approaches users with suggestions of private loans or moneylending and then progressively requests an ID, family relation certificate, and contact details of acquaintances — recently shifting away from direct phrases toward more indirect approaches, requiring continued attention.

The second half of 2025 in the General Chat area was a period in which novel Fraud and Impersonation tactics — disguised in the contexts of everyday relationships and familiar settings — emerged rapidly. Kakao plans to improve the precision of report-type analysis and to continuously refine its detection logic based on signals of anomalous activity from malicious accounts and report patterns.