Meta has launched a new on-device scam warning system on WhatsApp, aiming to tackle the growing tide of social media fraud with private alerts that give users more control over suspect messages.
Meta is expanding its anti-fraud efforts on WhatsApp with a new warning system designed to flag likely scams before users respond. The feature, called scam alerts, is in limited beta testing and uses on-device machine learning to identify suspicious messages. If the system spots a probable scam, it shows a private warning inside the chat, visible only to the recipient, giving them the choice to block the sender, report the conversation or keep chatting.
The company says the classification happens locally on the user’s device, so message content does not leave the phone for analysis and is not automatically shared with WhatsApp, Meta or anyone else. Users can also mark a chat as trusted if they believe the warning was a mistake, which stops that conversation from being checked again. In that case, they may optionally send the five most recent messages to WhatsApp to help improve detection.
Meta’s latest move comes as scam losses tied to social platforms continue to rise. The company said Americans lost more than $2.1 billion to social-media scams in 2025, with WhatsApp accounting for $425 million of that total. WhatsApp also has a user base of more than 3 billion people, making it a prime target for fraudsters, according to Meta.
The new feature follows a broader push by the company to harden its messaging products against abuse. TechCrunch reported in March that Meta had begun rolling out scam-detection tools across Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, while AP said Meta deactivated 6.8 million accounts linked to criminal scam centres in the first half of 2025. The company has also promoted anti-scam awareness campaigns and other safeguards, including warnings about suspicious group invites and unknown contacts.
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