If you don’t know how to find out if you have been sent a fake location on WhatsApp, we are going to show you a trick. In WhatsApp, you can send everything: messages, voice clips, photos, videos, contacts, documents, and your location, either at a specific moment or in real-time. When sending the location, you can choose between your current point or any place on the map, and depending on what you choose, it is displayed differently in the chat.
Thus, it is possible to know if someone has sent you their real location or used the WhatsApp search engine to send you a different place’s location.
How to find out if you have been sent a fake location on WhatsApp?
The trick to finding out if you have been sent a “fake” location is very simple because you just have to pay attention. When someone sends you the current location, the map preview in the chat will have no name or description. If a name or description is included below the map, they have used the search engine or chosen from the suggestions.
This method has been around for a long time, but many people were unaware of it. The idea is that if the name is beneath the map, the individual has sent something other than “the current location.” It’s also conceivable that he selected from nearby places at a time when the GPS couldn’t find him/her.
When sending a location in WhatsApp, you have three options. The first option, at the top, is the real-time location, which shows where you are until it is deactivated. To send a “static” location you have two options: Send my current location or choose places on the map.
The current location corresponds to the location of the mobile phone (it will be the one shown by the blue dot on Google Maps, for example), but it is also possible to choose from nearby places or use the search engine at the top. The search engine doesn’t work too well, but you can move the map to another area easily.
Not a foolproof method
As we discussed earlier, when someone taps Send my current location on WhatsApp, no text will be included below the map preview. This option sends the location of the mobile phone, but the problem is that it is possible to fake the location detected by the mobile phone, in which case it would be false, but would not include the text.
The trick will still work in some cases. For example, if you are sent a location with a text, you will know that it has been chosen on the map, for whatever reason.
How to protect WhatsApp privacy?
Without the name, it’s the actual location, which will generally be the mobile phone’s own location. But you can always change your location with apps like Fake GPS.
