Over the past few years, India has emerged as one of the top hubs for digital scams and fraud. With over 25 lakh incidents reported in 2025 alone, it has become the need of the hour for smartphones and apps to combat these treat actors actively. That is why, the upcoming Scam Alert feature on WhatsApp could very well mean the end of scammers.
WhatsApp Scam Alert Threat Detection Feature in the Work
As per the latest WABetaInfo report, WhatsApp is working on a way to flag and detect spam messages and calls and warn users before they can even proceed to interact with them. Dubbed Scam Alert, this is an in-built threat detection tool that has now been spotted on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.26.22.2 update.
As it is evident from the above image, in a future update WhatsApp users on Android will gain a new Scam Alert toggle, which when enabled will be able to detect and flag spam messages. The option will be turned off by default and will only come in play when it is manually toggled on.
Hence, when Scam Alert is on, users will get a new splash screen before they can proceed to interact with an unknown contact. It will show a "This maybe a scam" alert with two options to decide from - Block and Trust.
This gives users the full control to choose from and creates a physical barrier before bad actors can exploit unassuming people. While Scam Alert will not entirely prevent interaction with unknown contacts, it will allow users to review the details before proceeding.
Moreover, for Scam Alert to work, WhatsApp will not need to read users chats or send them to data servers for analysis. It ensures end-to-end encryption and works as a threat flagging tool based on unknown contact detection and identifying numbers previously reported as scam.
Also, WhatsApp will employ Private Processing to help users generate Scam Alert activities on device. This creates a layer of transparency and allows users to understand how the feature works behind the scenes.
For those unaware, Private Processing is part of Meta's secure data processing architecture that ensures that Meta AI is able to perform different tasks and actions, all the while ensuring the privacy of the user. The generated data is neither visible to Meta nor is shared with third-party vendors.
That said, Scam Alert on WhatsApp is currently under development with no clear idea of its beta or public release. We will know more once it moves into beta testing. So, stay tuned.
