Facebook Messenger: Facebook on Thursday announced that its Messenger is getting a new safety feature to prevent people from harmful interactions and possible scams. In a statement, the social media giant said that the feature would cause safety notices to pop up in chats, and they will give tips on how to spot suspicious activities and block or ignore a person who might potentially cause harm to the user. It added that the rolling out of the feature for Android-based platforms had commenced in March, and next week, this feature would also be rolled out for iOS users across the globe.
The company said that it is coming with tools to preserve the privacy of its users without accessing the messages as it moves towards end-to-end encryption of chats over Messenger. Facebook said that this feature has been developed through machine learning which looks for signals like an adult sending friend requests to a lot of minors. Through this, the feature would be available and effective once the end-to-end encryption on Messenger kicks in.
In the statement, Facebook emphasised on the fact that keeping minors safe has been one of the major aims of the company, with several special protections already in place for minors to limit their contact with adults who are not friends with them on the app. Apart from that, machine learning is also being used to detect and disable accounts of those adults who engage minors in inappropriate conversations.
This new feature will now make the minors aware about the need to remain cautious while talking to the adults who are not known to them and empower them to act before responding to a message.
Facebook also stated that sometimes people interact with a person on Messenger thinking that they know the other person or they trust them, but they turn out to be scammers or fraudsters. While the social media giant already has some checks in place, like filtering out potential spam or malware, or providing tips to avoid common scams. This new feature will make users aware of the possible ways to spot scams or imposters.
