WhatsApp is adding a warning screen that shows up before you even open a conversation with an unknown number.
The feature was spotted by WABetaInfo and is currently rolling out to beta users on Android and iOS.
The way it works is the moment you try to start a chat with a number you’ve never messaged, WhatsApp pulls up a screen showing where the number is registered, whether it’s in your contacts, and whether you share any WhatsApp groups with that person.
You then choose to continue or cancel, and if you cancel, the other person never gets notified.
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What makes this different from WhatsApp’s existing safety tools is that most of its warnings kick in after a conversation has started, sometimes well into it. This one stops you before you’ve typed a single word.
Timing here is crucial because a lot of scams depend on a very short window where nothing suspicious has technically happened yet. Someone messages you saying they changed their number; you assume it’s a friend, and by the time anything feels off, you’ve already been talking for a while.
A screen that makes you look at where a number is registered before you respond can interrupt that process early enough to actually be useful.
The feature is not perfect. If a scammer uses a local number, the country indicator won’t raise any flags, and if you’ve somehow saved a scammer’s number as a contact, the warning probably won’t appear at all.
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Legitimate people who just got a new number will also trigger it, so there will be false alarms.
WhatsApp has not shared the exact logic behind when the warning appears, though cross-border number registration seems to be a major factor. The rollout is global and is heading to full release on both major platforms.
