{"id":219785,"date":"2026-03-04T09:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T14:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/is-that-text-message-spam-or-legit-this-android-tool-can-tell-you-real-quick\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T10:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T15:20:10","slug":"is-that-text-message-spam-or-legit-this-android-tool-can-tell-you-real-quick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/is-that-text-message-spam-or-legit-this-android-tool-can-tell-you-real-quick\/","title":{"rendered":"Is that text message spam or legit? This Android tool can tell you real quick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-easily-check-whether-chats-or-messages-are-scams-on-android\/\">Is that text message spam or legit? This Android tool can tell you real quick<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-easily-check-whether-chats-or-messages-are-scams-on-android\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-easily-check-whether-chats-or-messages-are-scams-on-android\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-04 09:44:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Elyse Betters Picaro \/ ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Distinguishing spam messages from real ones can be tricky.<\/li>\n<li>Android has a scam-fighting AI trick up its sleeve.<\/li>\n<li>Circle to Search is available on Pixel and Galaxy phones.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know about you, but I receive more spam and scam messages on my phone each day than I do legitimate messages from friends and family.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s out of control.<\/p>\n<p>When I receive these messages, I always report them and block the sender. But sometimes, the messages are so carefully crafted that it&#8217;s not always easy to discern if a message is a scam. I&#8217;ll comb through the message, trying to spot the clues.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0How to turn on Private DNS Mode on Android &#8211; and why it&#8217;s a must for security<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong: The majority of these messages are obviously spam\/scam. My general rule is that if I don&#8217;t recognize the number, it&#8217;s probably a scam, so I report it. But every so often, a message&#8217;s legitimacy eludes me.<\/p>\n<p>How much does this really matter? Well, if you were to respond to the wrong message, you could wind up in a world of trouble. You don&#8217;t want that.<\/p>\n<p>So, what do you do when you&#8217;re faced with a message you&#8217;re not sure about? You turn to Android.<\/p>\n<p>Let me show you what I mean.<\/p>\n<h2>What is Circle to Search?<\/h2>\n<p>You might think that Android&#8217;s Circle to Search feature is nothing more than a way to find the perfect pair of shoes you&#8217;ve seen in an image. Sure, you can do that, and it&#8217;s a really helpful feature.<\/p>\n<p>But Circle to Search has another very important feature: it can help you determine whether an SMS or DM is a scam. Circle to Search uses AI to read a message and decipher its meaning. If the on-board AI believes a message is a scam, it will alert you to that fact.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: How to use Circle to Search on Android (and what models support it now)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When in doubt, why not?<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s   how it&#8217;s done.<\/p>\n<h2>How to enable Circle to search<\/h2>\n<p><strong>What you&#8217;ll need<\/strong>: Circle to Search is available on Android version 13 or later and requires a&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/how-to-easily-check-whether-chats-or-messages-are-scams-on-android\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is that text message spam or legit? This Android tool can tell you real quick&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/e6e5dab6022586b67ef998380243dc5c7c672fbf\/2026\/02\/18\/051214dd-aebb-4e80-a104-e8b011996ef8\/inside-googles-bid-to-make-ai-the-backbone-of-android-development.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70,72,57],"class_list":["post-219785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google","tag-pixel","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219787,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219785\/revisions\/219787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}