Sick Of Spam On WhatsApp? A Solution May Be Around Soon

If you’re being bothered by random, unknown accounts on WhatsApp, sending incessant spam messages promoting their businesses or offering alternative sources of income—and sharing potentially dangerous links, making your device vulnerable to cyber threats—there might be a solution just around the corner.

WhatsApp is reportedly working on a security feature to block messages from unknown accounts. In order to guard against unsolicited or potentially dangerous communications, this feature will allow you to automatically block incoming messages from unknown accounts, if their volume exceeded a predetermined threshold.

According to a report from WhatsApp tracking website WABetaInfo, the feature is available to some beta testers, allowing them to directly block large numbers of unknown messages within the app settings. "Thanks to the latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.24.20.16 update, which is available on the Google Play Store, we discovered that WhatsApp is rolling out a security feature to block messages from unknown accounts," the report noted.

Once available to the public, it will allow you to navigate to 'Privacy' settings on WhatsApp, scroll down to 'Advanced' section of the settings, and turn on the button for 'Block unknown account messages'.

When activated, this feature does not obstruct every unknown message, the report added. Rather, it targets accounts that send a disproportionately high number of messages in a short amount of time. This can potentially protect device performance by avoiding spam overload and allow you to continue receiving possibly important messages from unknown contacts. When the volume of messages returns to normal, the algorithm will automatically lift the block by monitoring the message rates from unknown accounts.

As a result, you are in a way only blocking unknown contacts who are acting suspiciously and not all unknown contacts indefinitely. Notably, in order to protect from possible spam or phishing attempts, WhatsApp will also advise turning on this feature, if it notices that you are receiving a large number of messages on your device from accounts you are not familiar with.

Some beta testers who install the most recent WhatsApp beta for Android updates from the Google Play Store can access this security feature. Over the next few weeks, this feature is expected to be made available to more users, the WABetaInfo report said.