Google Messages app receives a new spam protection feature

Search giant Google seems to have started rolling out a spam protection feature to its Messages app for Android, according to Android Police. It has been a few months since Google's spam protection feature for Android users is known to be under development. Report has it that Google opted for a server-sided roll-out in an attempt to make this feature available to users.

Spam protection feature inside a messaging app is not something new. Truecaller has a similar feature in place already. Once users receive the update, they should receive a push notification indicating that Google Messages app spam protection has been enabled.

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Once the feature becomes available, one can manually toggle the switch to turn it on or off. All users need to do is navigate to Messages app >  the Settings menu > Advanced > Spam Protection.

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According to the Google support page, it should be able to detect suspected spam and give users option to block and report spammers. Google has encouraged users to report suspected spam by tapping “Report spam.” Similarly, if a user thinks Messages has wrongfully detected something as spam, they can mark it as “Not Spam.”

According to Android Police, upon turning this feature on, information about the messages users receive such as phone numbers is sent to Google. The report further suggests that even if users report spam manually, it submits the full message to Google along with phone numbers of both sender and recipient in addition to the message’ content.