WhatsApp will show a ‘safety overview’ before you join unknown group chats

WhatsApp is adding different feature designed to support you from radical chat scams. Now, erstwhile idiosyncratic you mightiness not cognize invites you to a radical chat, the app volition show a caller “safety overview” that appears earlier you tin adjacent spot the messages.

The overview volition see accusation astir the group, including erstwhile it was created, who invited you, and however galore members it has. It volition besides see a informing to ticker retired for scams, arsenic good arsenic accusation connected however to bounds who tin invitation you to radical chats connected WhatsApp. Once you’ve viewed this page, you tin take to exit the radical without adjacent looking astatine the chat oregon presumption the chat for much information.

The diagnostic builds upon the “context card” that WhatsApp rolled retired past year, which shows cardinal accusation astir a group. While discourse cards volition look for each the groups you’re invited to, WhatsApp’s caller information overviews volition look arsenic an “interstitial” leafage erstwhile idiosyncratic you mightiness not admit sends you an invite.

These overviews necktie into WhatsApp’s broader inaugural to combat scams, which person go progressively prevalent — 73 percent of adults successful the US accidental they’ve experienced a scam oregon attack, according to a caller survey from the Pew Research Center.

In June, WhatsApp worked with Meta and OpenAI to instrumentality down a transgression scam halfway successful Cambodia, which utilized ChatGPT to make substance messages promising enactment to radical who joined a WhatsApp chat group. After directing radical to Telegram, scammers asked them to “like” videos connected TikTok arsenic their archetypal task. The atrocious actors past showed radical fake reports astir however overmuch wealth they had “earned” and aboriginal asked them to deposit wealth into a cryptocurrency relationship arsenic different “task.” 

Other forms of the scam progressive a rental scooter pyramid strategy and trying to get radical to put successful crypto, according to WhatsApp. “By utilizing much platforms, they’re trying to screen their tracks,” Clair Deevy, WhatsApp’s manager of outer affairs, said successful a property briefing. “But it besides means that erstwhile we are moving together, they are exposing themselves to much detection systems and teams crossed each the platforms astatine once.”

Along with its caller radical chat information feature, WhatsApp is besides investigating ways to combat scams that impact atrocious actors contacting you connected different platforms earlier asking you to transportation your speech to WhatsApp. It is trying retired caller ways to alert radical to “pause” earlier they commencement a chat with idiosyncratic not successful their contacts and volition amusement much discourse astir who they’re astir to message.