{"id":56777,"date":"2018-01-16T12:27:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T12:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=56777"},"modified":"2018-01-16T12:27:49","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T12:27:49","slug":"whatsapp-reportedly-testing-anti-chain-letter-spam-warning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/whatsapp-reportedly-testing-anti-chain-letter-spam-warning.html","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp reportedly testing anti-chain letter spam warning"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">WhatsApp reportedly testing anti-chain letter spam warning<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">WhatsApp appears to be testing a new feature aimed at trying to limit the spread of chain letter style spam messages and tackle viral fakes spreading on its platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Two WhatsApp blog sites, Whatsappen.nl and WABetaInfo, report spotting notification messages in the app which appear intended to warns users that they are at risk of forwarding some spam \u2014 by displaying a notice that the message \u201chas been forwarded many times\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">A similar warning is also shown displayed on a frequently forwarded message when it\u2019s received, although the feature is described as still in development and it\u2019s not clear whether WhatsApp intends to officially roll it out or not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">At the time of writing the company had not responded to our requests for confirmation that it\u2019s testing the anti-spam feature.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Chain letter messages that contain \u2014 at best \u2014 nonsense claims, and which urge other WhatApp users to forward the message to all their contacts to keep amplifying the spread are a staple sight on the platform (and indeed also on Facebook where users can get asked to copy-paste and repost a spam status message to spread it).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Such as the below example \u2014 which was circulating on the WhatsApp of a UK TechCrunch editor\u2019s child \u2014 which creatively reimagines the CEO of the company as an individual called \u2018Jim Balsamic\u2019\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">While these sorts of chain letters might seem like a pretty trivial form of fake news to worry about, the problem of false rumors spreading like lightning across WhatsApp\u2019s platform has been linked to far more serious consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In India, for example, fake rumors have reportedly triggered mob attacks that resulted in deaths and injuries.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Religious and caste tensions in India and Burma have also been stoked by fake posts spread via social media, as the Washington Post reported recently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Other fake rumors spread via WhatsApp apparently thwarted a local government immunization drive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Last year Facebook took out full page adverts in Indian newspapers telling people how to spot fake news (something it also did in Europe ahead of elections).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">But stepping up technical anti-spam measures on its platforms to try to slow the spread of viral fakes seems like the responsible thing for the company to do given the very real risks attached to how its technology is accelerating misinformation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/01\/16\/whatsapp-reportedly-testing-anti-chain-letter-spam-warning\/<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  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Two WhatsApp blog sites, Whatsappen.nl and WABetaInfo, report spotting notification messages in the app [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[114977],"class_list":["post-56777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-whatsapp-reportedly-testing-anti-chain-letter-spam-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}