WhatsApp is regularly used by scammers in addition to your friends. A new feature protects you from that.
Probably WhatsApp is your most used app on your iPhone or Android device. Unfortunately, scammers know that too, and so they try to get you to click on malicious links with messages. Fortunately, the service is going to help you with that in the future.
WhatsApp is currently working on a feature that will make it even safer to receive messages. We’ll tell you what that means, of course.
WhatsApp is going to protect you better
With WhatsApp, you not only share photos and videos, but also links to websites. Often this is well-intentioned. For example, think of planning a friends’ weekend, where someone wants to show a hotel. You can usually just trust those links.
Unfortunately, there are also people who want to take advantage of that. Because WhatsApp is so easily accessible, scammers also look for victims there. For example, they want you to click on a link that leads to a fake website. WhatsApp is now going to try to prevent that with a new feature.
The new feature in WhatsApp verifies links through Google Search. This works not only for links that are frequently forwarded, but for all links. Users only need to press on the link to see the Get link information through Google option. Pressing that will redirect you to the Google app with all the details about the link.
Check the link
So this is an ideal way to check a link before you actually visit it. Previously, this feature was only available for links that were frequently shared.
For now, the new feature is only available in the beta version of the app, namely version 2.24.22.19. WhatsApp wants to test the feature first before rolling it out permanently. Probably WhatsApp will not want to wait too long with this, as it is a good feature to protect users. Until then, don’t click on a link you don’t trust anyway.