With the recent upsurge in scamming through various social media, it is important that you learn how to protect yourself from these scammers.
One of the very common ones some scammers are using now is to get you into a group where people (fake) are sharing testimonials about a particular service or product and how good it was.
Most commonly among such groups are those related to investments. You are made to believe that the investment they are talking about is legitimate.
Such groups usually have a large following which may impress upon you that it is likely to be a legitimate group.
Unfortunately, these are more often than not illegitimate groups and the members in those groups have been handpicked by the administrators or could be fake accounts (bots) being deployed by the administrator to behave as if they are people who are testifying of how good the service or product is.
Some other members just like yourself will find themselves in the group without their knowledge. These scammers usually scout for vulnerable people from other legitimate groups and add them to their own groups.
It is best to protect yourself from being added to such groups in the first place. This is because these people may end up convincing you and dupe you of your hard-end money.
I don’t want you to become a victim so in this post I am going to share with you how to prevent people you don’t know from adding you to any group on WhatsApp.
Steps to take to prevent people from adding you to groups
1. Open your WhatsApp application
2. Click on the 3 dots at the top right corner
3. Choose Settingsย
4. Go to “Account”
5. Click on Privacy
6. Scroll down and click on “Groups”
When you click on groups there are 3 different options that you can choose from. Let’s explain each of the options;
1. Everyone
This option means that anyone at all who gets access to your contact can add you to any group they want.
If you ever find yourself in a group and realize that you don’t know the person who added you to the group then most likely than not, your group privacy setting is set to “everyone”.
If you want to restrict who can add you to a group then you have to try any of the two below.
2. My Contacts
As the name may suggest. When your group privacy is set to my contacts then only people whose contact you have saved on your phone (offline or online contact list) can add you to a group.
This is good for you if you don’t want anyone to add you to a group without your permission.
Sometimes people find themselves in a group and they start asking questions like “why am I here?”, ” who added me?”, etc
To avoid all of these, just turn on your group privacy to “My Contacts”
3. My Contacts Except
This option comes in handy when you have some people on your contact list who you wouldn’t allow to add you to a group without your permission.
Click on โDoneโ to save your new privacy settings.
Note:
All admins who are not allowed to add you to a group because your privacy settings do not permit them will have to send an invitation link for you before you can join their groups.
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