How We’re Building Scam Alert on WhatsApp With End-to-End Encryption and Verifiability Guarantees
Meta's WhatsApp implements Scam Alert, a user-controlled, optional feature using on-device machine learning to flag potential scam messages. The feature processes all data on-device, with no automatic reporting to WhatsApp or Meta, ensuring end-to-end encryption and user privacy. Scam Alert is trained on scam conversation patterns from user reports and uses differential privacy to anonymize and minimize data shared with WhatsApp.
The feature's design adheres to core principles, including on-device only processing, no automatic reporting, and user control. Message content remains private, and telemetry is processed through a confidential computing environment to provide aggregate and anonymous counts to WhatsApp. The machine learning model is publicly published and verifiable, and users can trust or block chats to refine the feature's accuracy.
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