WhatsApp is getting a great free update that takes the fight to the spammers

WhatsApp is taking action against one of the biggest online annoyances: spam. A new feature will block messages from unknown senders.

One of the great things about global messaging is also one of the worst: because the cost of contacting you is effectively zero, there's no shortage of spammers, scammers and other awful people sending you messages and malware. So it's great to see WhatsApp taking a stand by introducing a really useful anti-spam and anti-scam feature.

The new feature has been spotted by the software sleuths at WABetaInfo in the code of the latest WhatsApp beta. And it enables you to block messages from unknown accounts.

That's a big deal, because at the moment you can only block someone after they've already contacted you. With this feature, you'll be able to stop them contacting you at all.

What WhatsApp's new block feature can and can't do

The new feature is designed to take on junk senders without also blocking genuine people. As a result, it won't block someone who's sending a message to you and you alone – which is the kind of messaging behaviour actual, genuine humans would exhibit. Instead, it'll block unknown accounts "if they exceed a certain volume" – which is almost always the hallmark of someone that's up to no good.

One of the big benefits of this new feature is that it'll help protect you from malicious and/or fake links. At the moment, a spammer can send you a message in the expectation that you'll open it and then hopefully tap the link or be trackable via a link preview. A recent update did add link preview blocking to prevent messages from tracking you, but the new block feature goes further: you won't see the message, and that means you'll never open it.

As ever with beta features we don't know exactly when this one will roll out, but it's clearly close to being finished so it should just be a matter of ironing out the bugs before releasing it in a main app update.