Meta-owned WhatsApp has launched a much-needed privacy feature that would allow users to silence calls from unknown contacts. The feature was announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday.
This is also being seen as WhatsApp’s bid to put a check on spammers and unwanted contacts spamming users.
“You can now automatically silence incoming calls from unknown contacts on WhatsApp for even more privacy and control,” Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post.
Zuckerberg has made it easier to screen calls spam, scams and unwanted calls from unknown contacts on the world’s most popular messaging platform. This feature essentially means that WhatsApp calls from unknown numbers will not ring on the user’s device. However, the calls would still appear in the call list.
This announcement comes at a time when WhatsApp users in the country are witnessing a significant rise in spam calls from international numbers.
Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar took cognizance last month and had said that his ministry will send a notice to WhatsApp on the issue of spam calls from unknown international numbers.
Reacting to reports of increasing spam calls, WhatsApp also announced it has implemented new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems that will reduce such calls by at least 50 per cent.
