Fake News: WhatsApp Will NOT Let You Know When Someone Screenshots Your Chat

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Fake news website 8shit announced on January 23rd 2017 that starting from February 5th WhatsApp will let you know when someone screenshots a chat conversation you are involved in.

The story includes a fake quote by Jan Koum, the CEO of WhatsApp, commenting on the fact that this is an option requested by a lot of users lately:

After all these years, we've reached the conclusion to add it.The functioning is simple, just like the blue tick: You will have the option activated by default. If it's checked, you'll be notified if someone screenshots your conversation, and others will be notified if you screenshot theirs. If it's unchecked, no one gets notified.

No mention of the new feature has been made on the official blog of WhatsApp (or anywhere else for that matter). Which would make sense since the article is a hoax and a total fabrication. It even says so in the disclaimer found on the 8shit website:

8Shit is a satire news and humor website. All its content is fiction (except those under the "serious" category) and shouldn't be taken as real. All references, names and marks or institutions in this web are used as contextual elements, like in any novel or science-fiction story.

Still, enough people decided to share the news on social media anyway as this graph made with Trendolizer shows. Maybe somebody should send them a screenshot of this article...


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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