WhatsApp gets a Scam Alert feature for beta Android users

Reports in June this year revealed that WhatsApp was developing a Scam Alert feature. About two weeks ago, Meta officially detailed it.

However, WhatsApp is yet to state when the Scam Alert feature will roll out to everyone. It’s expected that the public release won’t be long as it’s now available to some Android users enrolled in WhatsApp’s beta programme. This was revealed by the folks at WABetaInfo, who discovered the development on beta version 2.26.34.1 of WhatsApp for Android.

The Scam Alert feature will warn users if an incoming message from an unknown sender is likely a scam. This is done without the sender knowing the recipient is using Scam Alert feature.

Also, in a situation where a WhatsApp user receives a Scam Alert warning, they can either mark the sender as trusted or block and report them. If the chat is marked as trusted, they can also share the last five messages from that conversation with WhatsApp. This will help to enhance the accuracy of the feature.

Nevertheless, since the feature is optional, Scam Alert have to be manually enabled in WhatsApp for Android’s Settings > Account menu. In Meta’s official blog post, WhatsApp’s Scam Alert is described as “a new, optional feature that runs an on-device machine learning model to alert a user about potential scam messages.”

Meta adds that the feature complements end-to-end encryption while enabling a user-controlled, optional scam alert when the model believes there’s a likely scam.

Source 1, source 2.