WhatsApp Scam Alert feature rolls out for select beta users

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WhatsApp has reportedly started rolling out the newly rumoured Scam Alert feature to beta testers. Back in June, reports revealed that WhatsApp was developing a Scam Alert feature, which Meta officially detailed over two weeks ago.

Now, the WhatsApp Scam Alert feature is available to some Android users enrolled in WhatsApp’s beta program.

WhatsApp feature tracker WABetaInfo noticed the feature on the beta version 2.26.34.1 of WhatsApp for Android.

Though WhatsApp has not explicitly revealed the public roll out of the Scam Alert feature, it’s could be soon.

As the name suggests, Scam Alert will warn users if an incoming message from an unknown sender appears to be a scam. Moreover, the sender will not know that the recipient is using Scam Alert.

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This will help users to filter scam calls and messages from genuine ones. WhatsApp users can also mark the the sender of the Scam messages as trusted or block and report them.

If they mark the chat as trusted, they can also share the last five messages from that conversation with WhatsApp to help improve the feature’s accuracy.

The Scam Alert can be turned on or off manually by the user in WhatsApp. The Scam Alert feature can be found by heading to Android’s Settings > Account menu.

In an official blog post, Meta described WhatsApp’s Scam Alert as “a new, optional feature that runs an on-device machine learning model to alert a user about potential scam messages.”

“No message content leaves the device for classification or is auto-reported to WhatsApp, Meta, or anyone else. The feature complements end-to-end encryption while enabling a user-controlled, optional scam alert when the model believes there’s a likely scam,” Meta further said.

Also Read:WhatsApp adds stronger security with passkeys, password-based 2FA

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