That WhatsApp It is well known that it is the most popular and used instant messaging app in the world, but its great popularity also leads to an increase in security problems for its numerous users: clearly, in fact, cybercriminals use the program as a privileged tool to access a vast audience of potential victims of the most disparate scams that are carried out daily.
Among the most frequent updates there are often those related to user security, but despite this, scammers often manage to be one step ahead, exploiting flaws in functions that at least apparently should not create any kind of problem: among these, for example, there is the one related to automatic downloads.
What should be a practical and convenient feature, as it allows you to automatically download images, videos, documents and voice messages, instead turns into a boomerang against the users of the app. The setting, generally set in this way by default, works only when you are connected to a WiFi network, in order to avoid the risk of running out of mobile data.
Since this is a download that occurs in backgroundso beyond the direct control of the user, this favors the exploitation of this function by cybercriminals, who hide malicious executable files within apparently harmless content. As mentioned, this is a function that operates automatically when WhatsApp is installed, but it can be deactivated quickly and easily, here’s how.
It will be enough to access the program settings through its mobile version and not on the desktop version: the steps are valid for both iOS and Android phones. Once you click on the icon with the three vertical dots, you need to select “Storage and data”, then “automatic media download”: from this section you can then customize the options related to downloading photos, audio, videos and documents.
Thanks to the change of the setting of default you can avoid automatically downloading content of dubious origin, thus contributing to increasing the security level of your smartphone. By doing so, you can also manage the storage space of your electronic device more carefully, not overloading it unnecessarily.