WhatsApp’s VoIP calls are fast, free, and often better than old-fashioned cellular calls (given your wifi is strong enough). In some parts of the world, it’s even become the default way to call people. With all that popularity, though, comes a spam call epidemic. Whether you rely on WhatsApp or your traditional phone app, spam callers won’t let up.
If you’ve received spam calls from random numbers (likely from different countries) at weird times, there’s some good news. Meta has a new WhatsApp feature that silences all calls from unknown numbers by default. You’ll still get a notification about the call, and you’ll see it in the call logs, but that’s it—a WhatsApp call from an unknown number will no longer wake you up in the middle of the night.
How to silence all unknown callers on WhatsApp
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The feature is simple to activate. To start, make sure you update to the latest version of WhatsApp, then go to Settings > Privacy > Calls. Here, enable the “Silence unknown caller” feature, and you’re done!
While you’re in the Settings section, we suggest you take a look at WhatsApp’s new Privacy Checkup feature as well. You’ll find it at the top of the Privacy page. From the simple step-by-step process, you’ll be able to control who can contact you, who has access to your personal info, and you’ll also learn how to protect your account.
Here’s what we suggest on the privacy front:
- Choose Who Can Contact You: In this section, stop anyone from randomly adding you to groups, and check your blocked contacts.
- Control Your Personal Info: Here, check who can access your profile photo, last seen status, and read receipts (you can choose not to share any of this data).
- Add More Privacy to Your Chats: Here, we suggest you enable end-to-end encrypted backups.
- Add More Protection to Your Account: It’s best to enable two-step verification to keep your WhatsApp data safe from being hacked. For extra security, you can enable screen lock specifically for the WhatsApp app.
[TechCrunch]