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About suspicious links
Android
iOS
Web and Desktop
Mac
For some links you receive in a chat, you may see a suspicious link indicator.
This indicator may appear when a link contains a combination of characters that is considered unusual. Spammers use character combinations to trick you into tapping on links. These links may appear to go to legitimate websites, but actually take you to a malicious site.
Here is an example of a suspicious link:
https://ẉhatsapp.com/free-tickets
Note: The first character looks like the letter "w" but is instead the character "ẉ." This means a spammer may have tricked you into visiting a website that wasn’t related to WhatsApp.
When receiving links, carefully review the content of the message. If a link is marked suspicious, you can hover over the link and a pop-up message will appear. The message will highlight any unusual characters within the link. Then you can choose to open the link or go back to the chat.
WhatsApp automatically performs checks to determine if a link is suspicious. To protect your privacy, these checks take place entirely on your device. Remember, because of end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp can’t see the content of your messages.
To learn more about how to stay safe on WhatsApp, read this article.
