Meta is rolling out an optional AI-powered feature on WhatsApp designed to catch scam messages before users fall for them. Called Scam Alert, the tool uses on-device machine learning to analyze incoming messages from non-contacts and flag anything that looks suspicious, all without shipping your chat data back to Meta’s servers.
The feature entered limited beta on August 12, 2026. It’s the latest move in what has become a sustained campaign by Meta to make its messaging platform less hospitable to fraudsters, following an earlier rollout of scam detection for device linking requests on WhatsApp.
How it works
When WhatsApp’s on-device model identifies a message as a likely scam attempt, it displays a warning directly in the chat. Only the recipient sees the alert. The person on the other end of the conversation has no idea it was flagged.
From there, the user has three options: block the sender, report them, or simply continue the conversation if they believe the warning was triggered in error. Users can also mark a chat as trusted, which prevents future false flags from the same contact.
