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 chat.
That is, by paying attention to a small detail, you will know if someone has sent you the current location as it is or has used the WhatsApp search engine. In practice it will help you detect when they send you a fake location, at least in some cases.
How to know if they send you the current location or not
The trick to know 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 chat has no name or description. If a name or description is included below the map, is that they have used the search engine or chosen among the suggestions.
When submitting a location other than the “current” location, place name and description are displayed
This simple trick has been available for a long time, although in the past WhatsApp differentiated even more, including icons of different colors within the map. Today we still have the name track, which is still very easy to see.
The idea is this: if the name is included below the map, the person has submitted something other than “the current location”. It could be, yes, that he has chosen from among the nearby places at a time when the GPS does not locate correctly and one of the suggestions seems more reliable or relevant than the location detected by the mobile.
Why is this happening
If they choose a place on the map other than the current location button, the name of the place is shown in the preview in chat
The reason this happens is simple. When it comes to sending a location on WhatsApp, you have three options. The first option, at the top, is the real-time location, which updates 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 (it will be the one shown by the blue dot on Google Maps, for example), but it is also possible to choose between nearby places or use the top seeker. The search engine doesn’t work very well, but you can move the map to another area and then search to submit a place on the other side of the world, if you wish.
It is not a foolproof method
This trick will work only if the other person is not tricking the phone (and WhatsApp) with a fake location with apps like Fake GPS.
As we mentioned before, when someone presses Send my current location on WhatsApp, no text will be included below the map preview. This option sends the location of the mobile, but the problem is that it is possible to falsify the location detected by the mobile, in which case it would be false, but would not include the text.
The trick will still serve you in some cases. For example, if they send you a location with a text, you will know that it has been chosen on the map, for whatever reason. Without it, it is the current location, which will generally be that of the mobile, except for those people who have bothered enough to fake the mobile location with apps like Fake GPS.