About this bot
WhatsApp is a on demand fetcher associated with WhatsApp and used for link preview.
Primary directory identity signal: WhatsApp/2.0. Representative HTTP identity: WhatsApp/2.0.
Directory status: Active. Identity classification: Unverified with Medium confidence. Identity type: observed unconfirmed.
robots.txt behavior is currently unconfirmed. Do not assume robots.txt alone will control this traffic.
Risk classification: Safe. Recommended handling is to generally allow or monitor rather than block by identity alone.
How to identify this bot
- User-agent and crawler identifiers
-
WhatsApp/2.0 - Also known as
Details
- Kind
- On demand fetcher
- Family
- Purpose
- Link preview
- Common Use
- Fetching titles, descriptions, images, and related metadata for links shared in WhatsApp conversations.
- Respects robots.txt
- Unknown
Verification
- Identity Type
- observed-unconfirmed
- Evidence Method
- Treat WhatsApp/2.0 as a claimed preview-client marker and corroborate with behavior/source context; do not treat UA text as proof of Meta origin.
- Detection Notes
- Traffic is generally user-triggered preview fetching rather than systematic indexing. Current operator-controlled authentication evidence is insufficient for promotion.
Website controls
- Apache Rule
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "WhatsApp/2.0" botcrawl_match=1- Nginx Rule
if ($http_user_agent ~* "WhatsApp/2\.0") { set $botcrawl_match 1; }