We have been hearing news recently of a lot of fake posts being circulated in WhatsApp which have created panic among people. The Government of India has been in constant touch with the developers of WhatsApp to make sure that such fake news is not circulated via its Messaging platform which is used by millions of users around the globe.
To try and restrict fake posts through its messaging platform, WhatsApp has been working on a new feature “Forwarded Label” for some time now. The new feature helps in finding out the origin of the message.
The company is now rolling out the new feature via a server update to all platforms at the same time. The users will be seeing a “Forwarded” symbol on top of the message which has been sent by their friends and family members. The symbol makes it easy to identify that the message received is a forwarded message and has not be written by the person who has sent it.
The users would need to be on the latest version of WhatsApp to be able to get the new “Forwarded Label” feature. Since the activation is through the servers of WhatsApp, users will not be seeing any update in their respective stores.
We have been able to verify that the feature is already active on Windows Phones. The feature is being rolled to the stable versions of the application on all platforms. The Beta version of WhatsApp on Windows Phone has also received this feature.
WhatsApp recently published an article in the newspapers in India in regards to the precautions to be taken in believing the fake news and how the users need to check the genuity of the news before forwarding the messages.
WhatsApp says that it cares deeply about its users safety. “We encourage you to think before sharing messages that were forwarded. As a reminder, you can report spam or block a contact in one tap and can always reach out to WhatsApp directly for help,” the company said.
