Google Messages Gets a Safety Upgrade: Spam Blocking, Nudity Warnings, and More

Google is rolling out a series of new features to Google Messages aimed at keeping your inbox safer and more secure. These updates include enhanced spam detection, nudity warnings, and even identity verification.

Fighting Spam and Scams

Google Messages is taking on spammy job-seeking and package-delivery texts head-on with an upgraded scam detection system. This system, currently available to beta users with spam protection enabled, utilizes on-device machine learning to identify and filter out fraudulent messages. Google emphasizes that your conversations remain private, as the on-device model prevents them from seeing your messages unless you report something.

The new system will be rolled out to all Google Messages users in the coming months, helping to protect them from falling victim to these common scams.

Sensitive Content Warning for Nudity

Google is also adding a new “Sensitive Content Warning” feature to help protect users from potentially harmful content. This optional feature will use on-device scanning to detect nudity in images. If a potentially explicit image is detected, users will see a “speed bump” with resources and options before viewing the image.

This feature is designed to protect users, especially younger ones, from accidentally encountering inappropriate content. It will be enabled by default for users under 18 and will roll out to Android 9 and higher devices with more than 2GB of RAM in the coming months.

Google emphasizes that this on-device scanning doesn’t involve sending images to Google or breaking end-to-end encryption, similar to Apple’s Communication Safety feature.

Future Enhancements

Google has further plans to enhance the security and privacy of Google Messages. These include:

• Automatically hiding messages from unknown international numbers.
• Adding warnings when users receive messages with potentially dangerous links.
• Introducing a “contact verifying” feature for Android, allowing users to verify the identity of their contacts using public keys.

Stay Safe Online with Google Messages

These new features demonstrate Google’s commitment to making Google Messages a safer and more secure platform for communication. By staying informed about these updates and utilizing the available features, you can help protect yourself from online threats and enjoy a more secure messaging experience.

Ready to upgrade your messaging experience?
Join the Google Messages beta program today and try out the latest features.