Tips to ensure a safer WhatsApp experience

WhatsApp has become an indispensable part of our lives these days. Every smartphone user has to have WhatsApp installed. In fact, it is one of the many important criteria for owning a smartphone in some societies of our country.

If you are using the popular messenger bathed in hues of green and white, it is pretty normal to receive weird spam messages on WhatsApp these days. Whether your friend forwards it or the WhatsApp group you are part of received it from one of the members, it is disturbing. If you are worried about these spam messages on WhatsApp, you generally do either of the two things – ignore it or delete it.

However, in the wake of deadly cyber attacks in the past few months, the world of technology has woken up to ensure enhanced security for all kinds of devices – whether it’s a desktop computer or a smartphone. People are more worried about the security of their data than they have been ever before. Hackers are getting smarter and utilising general everyday mediums of communication to spread their malicious codes to as many people as possible.

Now, WhatsApp is an extremely popular messaging platform and the millions of users on it have a high chance of getting exposed to harmful stuff. Although the company is trying hard to keep the platform free of malicious content, it is also expected that its users give in similar efforts to this cause as well. As they say, it takes two hands to clap.

There are some steps that a WhatsApp user should ensure to stay an arm's length from cyber crime. To ensure a safer WhatsApp experience, consider the following security tips.

1 Watch out for messages with wrong spellings and poor grammar from new or unknown contacts. Hackers often have the knowledge about complex computer coding but don’t spend enough time on learning the rules of the English language. Therefore, it is easy to spot their intentions by understanding the message content.

2. You might receive messages with links asking you to share it with more people. It is advisable to avoid tapping on those links and delete them from your device. Those links may be a gateway to malicious apps or malware-loaded websites.

3. Sometimes, you might receive messages asking you to submit your personal information on the event of winning a contest that you were not even aware of. Hackers try these methods to gain a massive database which could be sold to advertisers for a huge sum of money. Remember that WhatsApp never asks for information apart from the time of registration.

4. It is also advisable to never share/forward messages with your contacts that ask you to do so. Those messages could often contain embedded malware and can secretly leak your data in the background. Delete them as soon as you receive one.

5. Never click on messages that provide links to unlock new features on WhatsApp. Whenever a new feature is added to WhatsApp, the notification of the same is provided on the update page on the Play Store or App Store.

6. every now and then, you might be getting a message that says that WhatsApp is becoming a paid service and users have to pay immediately to retain their service and data. It is good to know that WhatsApp is free messaging service, until the company announces it publicly, in which case you should be hearing it from the media. Never click on such links and delete them as soon as possible.

7. If you receive a message in a language that you don’t understand from a person whom you don’t know, prefer to block the contact first and delete the message as soon as possible. You never know what malicious code such a message is hiding.

Apart from these, if you witness anything suspicious on WhatsApp, it would be wise to report it to WhatsApp by going to ‘Help’ under Settings.

(source)