Last updated: February 16, 2024 (archived versions)
WhatsApp Privacy Policy
Table of Contents
- Key Updates
- WhatsApp Legal Info
- Information We Collect
- Information Shared by You and by WhatsApp with Third Parties
- How We Work With Other Meta Companies
- How and Why We Process Your Information and Our Legal Basis For Processing
- How To Exercise Your Rights
- Retention of Your Information
- Deleting Your Information
- Managing Your Information
- Working With Authorities, Advisors And Industry Partners
- Transferring Information to Other Countries
- Updates to Our Privacy Policy
- Contact Us
If you live in the European Region, WhatsApp Ireland Limited provides the Services to you under this Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
If you live outside the European Region or the UK, WhatsApp LLC provides the Services to you under this Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Key Updates
We’ve updated our Privacy Policy to reduce the minimum age to use WhatsApp in the UK from 16 to 13. This ensures a consistent minimum age requirement for WhatsApp globally. Please refer here for privacy and safety information.
As always, your personal messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted. No one else, not even WhatsApp, can read or listen to them.
WhatsApp Legal Info
If you live in the UK, WhatsApp LLC ("WhatsApp," "our," "we," or "us") provides our Services to you under the Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy .
Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA. Since we started WhatsApp, we've aspired to build our Services with a set of strong privacy principles in mind.
We are one of the Meta Companies. Our Privacy Policy ("Privacy Policy") explains our data practices, including the information we process to provide our Services.
For example, our Privacy Policy talks about what information we collect and how this affects you. It also explains the steps we take to protect your privacy, like building our Services so delivered messages aren't stored by us and giving you control over who you communicate with on our Services.
This Privacy Policy applies to all of our Services unless specified otherwise. Some products or features that we offer have supplemental privacy policies which supplement this WhatsApp Privacy Policy: Channels Supplemental Privacy Policy.
Please also read WhatsApp's Terms of Service ("Terms"), which describe the terms under which you use and we provide our Services.
Information We Collect
The types of information we receive and collect depend on how you use our Services. We require certain of Your Account Information in accordance with our Terms to deliver our Services and without this we will not be able to provide our Services to you. For example, you must provide your mobile phone number to create an account to use our Services.
Our Services have optional features which, if used by you, require us to collect additional information to provide such features. You will be notified of such a collection, as appropriate. If you choose not to provide the information needed to use a feature, you will be unable to use the feature. For example, you cannot share your Precise Location Information with your contacts if you do not enable location sharing on your device. Permissions can be managed through your device-based settings on both Android and iOS devices.
Information You Provide
- Your Account Information. You must provide your mobile phone number and a profile name of your choice to create a WhatsApp account. If you don’t provide us with this information, you will not be able to create an account to use our Services. You can add other optional information to your account, such as a profile picture, and "about" information.
- User Content.
- Your Messages, Media within Messages, and Calls: We offer end-to-end encryption for our Services. End-to-end encryption means that your calls, messages, media within messages including content like images, audio, video, documents and files are encrypted to protect against third parties (including WhatsApp) from seeing that content. Learn more about end-to-end encryption and how businesses communicate with you on WhatsApp.
Typically your messages are stored on your device(s) and not on our servers. We temporarily store your messages in encrypted form while they are being delivered. Once your messages are delivered, they are deleted from our servers.
If a message cannot be delivered, we keep it in encrypted form on our servers for up to 30 days while we try to deliver it. If a message is still undelivered after 30 days, we delete it. We cannot see the contents of undelivered messages stored on our servers as they are encrypted.
When a user sends media within a message, we store that media for up to 30 days in encrypted form on our servers to aid in more efficient delivery, such as if recipients choose to forward the media. We cannot see the media as it is encrypted. - Status Information. You can choose to share your Status, which is also end-to-end encrypted.
- Precise Location Information. We enable you to share your Precise Location Information from your device when you choose to use location-related features, like when you decide to share your current location with, or send live location to your contacts, or view locations nearby. Precise Location Information that you share with your contacts in your chats is encrypted so WhatsApp cannot see it. You can control your Precise Location Information sharing in your in-app settings (see more information for iPhone and Android) and your device-based settings.
- You may also provide content that is not encrypted which means that we can see it. This includes your profile picture, your "about" information and names and descriptions of your communities and groups. When you choose to use certain avatars features, such as using a photo to enable us to suggest an avatar that more closely resembles you, we process the photo and parts of your face or body features in the photo frame. The information we use for this process is not used to identify you.
- Your Messages, Media within Messages, and Calls: We offer end-to-end encryption for our Services. End-to-end encryption means that your calls, messages, media within messages including content like images, audio, video, documents and files are encrypted to protect against third parties (including WhatsApp) from seeing that content. Learn more about end-to-end encryption and how businesses communicate with you on WhatsApp.
- Your Connections.
You can use contact upload and provide us with the phone numbers in your device address book on a regular basis, including those of users of our Services and your other contacts. If any of your contacts aren’t yet using our Services, we’ll manage this information in a way that is designed to ensure that those contacts cannot be identified by us. Learn more about contact upload and about the information we provide to people who do not use WhatsApp here. We also collect information on users who contact you that aren't in your device address book and any users you've blocked or who have blocked you. - Your Community and Group Information.
You can create, join, or get added to communities, groups and broadcast lists, and such communities, groups and lists get associated with your account. You give your groups and communities a name. You can provide a community or group profile picture or description. We also collect information about when communities and groups are created or updated. - Customer Support Information And Other Communications.
When you contact us for customer support or otherwise communicate with us, you may provide us with information related to your use of our Services, including copies of your messages, any other information you deem helpful in order for us to understand and resolve your query, and how to contact you (e.g., an email address). For example, you may send us an email with information relating to app performance or other issues. We also collect information on how you use our customer support features (e.g., the searches you make on our Help Center) and any feedback you give us on the customer support experience. - Account Access Information.
When you sign up or log-in to our Service, we verify your WhatsApp account, for example, by sending you a code via SMS or calling you. You can also add a PIN to enable two-step verification and an email address that can be used to reset that PIN.
Automatically Collected Information
- Usage Information.
We collect information about your usage of our Services. This includes collecting information about your activity (including how you use our Services), how you interact with others using our Services (including when you search for and interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities. This also includes information about the features you use like our messaging (and integrated applications), calling, Status, avatars, communities, groups or business features; whether you are online; timestamps related to your use such as when you last used our Services (your "last seen") and the times you send and receive calls and messages; and when you last updated your "about" information. - Log and Troubleshooting Information.
We collect information about how our Services are performing when you use them, like service related diagnostic and performance information. This information includes log files, timestamps, diagnostic or crash data, website performance logs and error messages or reports. - Device And Connection Information.
We collect device and connection-specific information when you install, access, or use our Services. This includes information such as hardware model, operating system information, battery level, signal strength, app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information including whether you are using wifi or cellular data, mobile operator or internet service provider (ISP), language and time zone, IP address, device operations information and identifiers (including identifiers unique to Meta Company Products associated with the same device or account). - General Location Information.
Even if you do not choose to use our precise location-related features (see Information Shared by You and by WhatsApp with Third Parties), we use IP addresses and other information like phone number area codes, to estimate your general location (e.g., country). - Cookies.
We collect information using cookies to operate and provide our web-based Services and website. Learn more about how we use cookies to provide you our Services. - User Choices.
We collect information about your in-app settings, privacy settings and records about when you accepted terms. Only you are in control of your privacy settings which can be used to change, for example, who can see your "last seen", profile photo, "about" information, Status updates, read receipts or add you to groups. We also collect information about whether you have enabled push notifications and whether you wish to send disappearing messages. - Authentication Information.
To verify and grant appropriate authorisations as you use the Services (such as when you choose to use encrypted backups and create your unique password), we create and store authentication codes which are a security measure to ensure only you are accessing your account. Authentication Information also includes your public encryption keys that our end-to-end encryption protocol uses. Messages are encrypted before they reach our servers which means that we cannot see them.
Information Third Parties Provide About You
- Information Others Provide About You.
We receive information about you from other users. For example, when other users you know use our Services, they may provide your phone number if they use contact upload just as you may provide theirs. We require each of these users to have lawful rights to collect, use, and share your information before providing any information to us. They may also send you messages, send messages to groups to which you belong, or call you. You should keep in mind that in general any user can capture screenshots of your chats or messages or make recordings of your calls with them and send them to WhatsApp or anyone else, or post them on another platform. - User Reports.
Just as you can report other users, other users or third parties may also choose to report to us your interactions and your messages with them or others on our Services; for example, to report possible violations of our Terms or policies. When a report is submitted to us through the reporting tools, we receive information from the reporter on both the reporting user and those reported. To find out more about the information we receive when a User Report is submitted to us and what happens when a User Report is submitted, please see About blocking and reporting contacts. - Businesses On WhatsApp.
When businesses you interact with while using our Services provide us with information about their interactions with you, we require each of these businesses to act in accordance with applicable law.
When you message with a business on WhatsApp, keep in mind that the content you share may be visible to several people in that business. In addition, some businesses might be working with third-party service providers (which may include Meta) to help manage their communications with their customers. For example, a business may give such third-party service providers access to its communications to send, store, read, manage or otherwise process them for the business. To understand how a business processes your information, including how it might share your information with third parties or Meta, you should review that business’s privacy policy or contact the business directly. - Third-Party Services.
WhatsApp receives information about bad actors and abuse from Meta Companies and app verification information from anti-abuse services to promote safety, security and integrity. For example, when Meta becomes aware of a scam encouraging individuals to contact a phone number via WhatsApp, they might share that phone number with WhatsApp so we can investigate the WhatsApp account.
We also allow you to use our Services in connection with third-party services and Meta Company Products. If you use our Services with such third-party services or Meta Company Products, we may receive information about you from them; for example, if you use the WhatsApp share button on a news service to share a news article with your WhatsApp contacts, groups, or broadcast lists on our Services. Please note that when you use third-party services or Meta Company Products, the terms and privacy policies of the company that offers those services will govern your use of those services and products.
Information Shared by You and by WhatsApp with Third Parties
You share your information as you use and communicate through our Services, and we share your information to help us operate, provide, improve, understand, customise and support our Services.
- Send Your Information To Those With Whom You Choose To Communicate. You share User Content when you communicate through our Services. You are in control of what you are sending when you send your information to the individual or business WhatsApp users you choose to communicate with. Please be mindful that, once you have sent User Content to a WhatsApp user, they can store or reshare it with others on and off our Services.
- Information Associated With Your Account. As part of your WhatsApp messaging experience and based on your privacy settings, those users who have your phone number can see Your Account Information (phone number, profile photo, "about" information), and can add you to groups and communities where this information is then potentially visible to others in the group or community. When you send a message to another user or to a group, your chosen profile name will become visible to the recipients of the message, including users who do not have you in their contact list. Users who have your phone number can also see your "last seen" information and your message receipts, depending on your privacy settings. You can configure your privacy settings to manage group membership, and certain information (for example, your "last seen") available to other users. Please see our Help Center for more information on how to change your privacy settings.
- Third-Party Services. When you, or other users you interact with, use third-party services or other Meta Company Products that are linked through our Services, the providers of those services or products may receive the information about you that you or others share with them. For example, if you use a data backup service integrated with our Services (like iCloud or Google Drive), they will receive the information you share with them, such as your WhatsApp messages, and if you search the web from WhatsApp for a group profile picture, the search engine provider will receive the search term you use. If you interact with a third-party service or other Meta Company Products through our Services, such as when you use the in-app player to play content from a third-party platform like YouTube or Facebook, information like your IP address and technical information showing that the request comes from a WhatsApp app, may be provided to the provider of such service or products. Please note that when you use third-party services or other Meta Company Products, their own terms and privacy policies will govern your use of those services and products.
- Third-Party Service Providers. We work with third-party service providers to help us provide our Services. When we share information with third-party service providers in this capacity, we require them to use your information on our behalf in accordance with our instructions and terms.
We work with the following different types of third-party service providers:- telecommunications technology providers to send you SMS messages, or call you, to verify your account. To be able to provide these services, these providers receive Your Account Information (phone number) and Account Access Information (verification codes to enable you to verify a new phone number or device connected to your account).
- a content safety technology service provider that helps us to maintain the safety and integrity of the Services by detecting and helping us to prioritise harmful material for our reviewers to assess. To provide these services, this provider receives certain images from User Reports (e.g. images), Your Account Information (e.g. profile picture) and Your Community and Group Information (e.g. community or group profile picture).
- a location data provider to enable you to share your location or a nearby place with other WhatsApp users. To be able to provide these services, this provider receives Precise Location Information (your current location and other locations you choose on the map).
Please also see the How We Work With Other Meta Companies and Working with Authorities, Advisors and Industry Partners sections for further information we share.
How We Work With Other Meta Companies
WhatsApp is one of the Meta Companies. The Meta Companies provide technology products and services for both individuals and businesses.
We work with other Meta Companies that act as our service providers and help us provide and improve our Services.
We work with other Meta Companies within and outside the UK.
The services include providing us with:
- data hosting and infrastructure services, including the use of data centers together with related services and equipment which are used to operate the Services.
- operational, administrative and customer support services to help us:
- operate, improve, and develop the Services;
- develop, fix and customise the Services;
- respond to user/non-user queries and provide support relating to the queries;
- ensure accounts are kept safe and secure;
- contract administration, project management, planning and any related purposes; and
- carry out customer satisfaction surveys.
- business analytics services so that we can learn for example how many unique users we have compared to other services offered by the Meta Companies;
- product research and testing (features of) services to help us improve our Services; and
- troubleshoot technical issues, and ensure the Services operate smoothly.
- legal support services to help us:
- in litigation and other dispute processes;
- regulatory investigations and other statutory processes;
- with handling complaints and/or requests from data subjects;
- with responding to government and other legal requests;
- with our legal administration;
- with the management of privacy-related queries, including development of tooling and record repositories; and
- with other legal support as requested from time to time.
- assistance when we respond pursuant to applicable law or regulations, to legal requests and government requests, including in emergency situations, with:
- disclosing relevant personal information to law enforcement, government authorities, regulators or others; and
- disclosing personal information to third parties in the context of civil legal proceedings.
- administrative services to help us with our efforts to ensure that the Services are safe and secure by:
- investigating any suspicious activities or violations of our policies; and
- removing violating accounts.
- services to help us to guard against violations of our intellectual property by:
- reviewing accounts for violation of WhatsApp policies;
- assisting with enforcement against those accounts;
- providing periodic reports to us on individual accounts that have been reviewed and enforced upon; and
- escalating any cases requiring legal review to us.
When Meta Companies act as our service providers, we require them to use your information on our behalf in accordance with our instructions and terms.
- For receiving the services listed above and depending on the service that is provided, we share the Information We Collect.
If you would like further details about the Meta Companies that currently act as our service providers, please click here.
How and Why We Process Your Information and Our Legal Basis For Processing
Under applicable data protection law, companies must have a legal basis to process information. We rely on different legal bases to process your information for the various purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
For each legal basis below, we describe the purposes of our processing (why we process your information) and our processing operations (how we process your information to achieve each purpose). We also list the categories of your information that we process for each purpose.
You also have particular rights available to you depending on which legal basis we use, and we've explained these below. You should know that no matter what legal basis applies, you always have the right to request access to, rectification of, and erasure of your information. To exercise your rights, see the How To Exercise Your Rights section.
Processing necessary to perform our contract with you
For all users who have the legal capacity to enter into an enforceable contract (for example, by being the age of majority or above in their country of residence), we process information as necessary to conclude and perform our contract with you, our Terms.
The categories of information used and why and how they are processed are set out below:
Why And How We Process Your Information | Information Categories Used |
To operate, provide, improve, customise, and support our Services as described in the About Our Services section of our Terms which includes providing ways for you to connect and communicate with other WhatsApp users including businesses, WhatsApp: | |
Assists you in creating and managing your WhatsApp account by:
| To assist you in creating and managing your WhatsApp account: |
Facilitates you using and managing your WhatsApp account on multiple devices by:
| For linking a device to your account:
For syncing your Account Information and User Choices across your devices:
For syncing your chat history across your devices:
|
To send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages and broadcast your Status, we:
| To send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages and to broadcast your Status:
For showing your presence (in one-to-one chats) and last seen:
For showing your activity indicators:
For sharing your Status:
|
To generally operate, provide and improve our Services, we:
| To generally operate, provide and improve our Services: |
To enable you to connect with businesses, we:
| To enable you to connect with businesses: |
For making, receiving, joining or leaving voice and video calls, we:
When you change your in-app settings or take certain actions in a call, we let the other call participant(s) know the following:
To optimise call quality, we:
| For making, receiving, joining or leaving voice and video calls:
For notifying call participants about changes during a call: For optimising call quality: |
To help you discover if your contacts are WhatsApp users when you choose to sync your device’s address book using contact upload, we:
| To enable you to use contact upload: |
To allow you to create, join, leave and connect in communities and groups to communicate with multiple contacts at the same time, we:
| For creating a group or community:
For administering active groups or communities: |
Assists you to create backups of your chat history (and media within the chat history), when you request it by:
| For allowing you to create, access and restore backups and encrypted backups:
|
To ensure the safety, security, and integrity of our Services. We use information we have and apply automated data processing techniques and, in some instances, conduct manual (human) review to:
| To ensure the safety, security and integrity of our Services:
|
Transfer, store or process your information globally. As the WhatsApp service operates globally, with users and businesses around the world, we need to share information we collect globally, both internally within the Meta Companies and where the data centers we rely on are located and externally with our Third-Party Service Providers. We carry out necessary transfers to:
For more information, see Transferring Information to Other Countries section below. | To operate and provide our Services:
|
Communicate with you on Services-related issues, we:
| For sending you notifications or updates about our Services:
|
Provide customer support by:
| For providing you with customer support: |
When we process information you provide to us as necessary to perform our contractual relationship with you, under applicable data protection laws you have the right to port it. To exercise your rights, visit the How To Exercise Your Rights section of this Privacy Policy.
The other legal bases we rely on when processing your information and the circumstances in which we rely on them are set out below:
Your Consent
We process information for the purposes described below when you have given us your consent to enable particular product features in your device-based settings. The categories of information used and why and how it’s processed are set out below:
Why And How We Process Your Information | Information Categories Used |
For collecting information through the device-based settings which you have enabled, for example:
|
When we process your information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on such consent before the consent is withdrawn. To exercise your rights, visit your device-based settings, your in-app settings like your live location control, and the How To Exercise Your Rights section of this Privacy Policy.
Compliance With A Legal Obligation
We process information to comply with a legal obligation including, for example, to access, preserve or disclose certain information if there is a valid legal request. Examples of laws that could give rise to a legal obligation requiring us to process information are set out below. New laws may be enacted or other obligations may become binding on our processing and we will update the list of laws from time to time.
Why And How We Process Your Information | Information Categories Used |
For processing information when we comply with a legal obligation including, for example, to access, preserve or disclose certain information if there is a valid legal request from a regulator, law enforcement or others. For example, a search warrant or production order from law enforcement to provide information in relation to an investigation, such as your profile picture or IP address. |
|
Protection Of Your Vital Interests Or Those Of Another Person
Why And How We Process Your Information | Information Categories Used |
For protecting your vital interests or those of another person. We apply automated processing techniques and conduct manual (human) review. We share information with law enforcement and others, in circumstances where someone’s vital interests require protection, such as in the case of emergencies. These vital interests include protection of your or someone else’s life, physical or mental health, wellbeing or integrity or that of others. In protecting such vital interests we aim to combat harmful conduct and promote safety, integrity and security. For example, we investigate reports of harmful conduct and take appropriate action, such as sharing information with relevant authorities, where there is a risk of imminent harmful conduct such as an attack or where a person’s safety is at risk. We also compare profile pictures, community and group pictures and reported images against a database of known hashed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and use a combination of automated processing techniques and human review to detect previously unknown CSAM in these images. If we detect apparent CSAM, we report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (learn more about how we work to help fight child exploitation here). |
|
Legitimate Interests
We rely on our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third-party, such as our users, where they are not outweighed by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms ("legitimate interests"):
Why And How We Process Your Information | Legitimate Interests Relied On | Information Categories Used |
For users under the age of majority (under 18, in most applicable countries) who have a limited ability to enter into an enforceable contract only, where we may be unable to process your information on the grounds of contractual necessity. | ||
Assisting you in creating and managing your WhatsApp account by:
|
| To assist you in creating and managing your WhatsApp account: |
Facilitates you using and managing your WhatsApp account on multiple devices by:
|
| For linking a device to your account:
For syncing your Account Information and User Choices across your devices:
For syncing your chat history across your devices:
|
To send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages and broadcast your Status, we:
|
| To send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages and to broadcast your Status:
For showing your presence (in one-to-one chats) and last seen:
For showing your activity indicators:
For sharing your Status:
|
To generally operate, provide and improve our Services, we:
|
| To generally operate, provide and improve our Services: |
To enable you to connect with businesses, we:
|
| To enable you to connect with businesses: |
For making, receiving, joining or leaving voice and video calls, we:
When you change your in-app settings or take certain actions in a call, we let the other call participant(s) know the following:
To optimise call quality, we:
|
| For making, receiving, joining or leaving voice and video calls:
For notifying call participants about changes during a call: For optimising call quality: |
To help you discover if your contacts are WhatsApp users when you choose to sync your device’s address book using contact upload, we:
|
| To enable you to use contact upload: |
To allow you to create, join, leave and connect in communities and groups to communicate with multiple contacts at the same time, we:
|
| For creating a group or community:
For administering active groups or communities: |
Assists you to create backups of your chat history (and media within the chat history), when you request it by:
|
| For allowing you to create, access and restore backups and encrypted backups:
|
To ensure safety, security, and integrity of our Services. We use information we have and apply automated data processing techniques and, in some instances, conduct manual (human) review to:
|
| To ensure the safety, security and integrity of our Services:
|
Communicate with you on Services-related issues, we:
|
| For sending you notifications or updates about our Services:
|
Provide customer support by:
|
| For providing you with customer support: |
For all users of our Services including users under the age of majority | ||
Business intelligence and analytics:
|
| |
We preserve and share information with others including law enforcement and to respond to legal requests. This includes responding to legal requests where we are not compelled by applicable law but have a good faith belief it is required by law in the relevant jurisdiction or sharing information with law enforcement or industry partners/peers such as other online platforms and technology companies to combat abusive or illegal behaviour. For example, we preserve a snapshot of user information when requested by law enforcement where necessary for the purposes of an investigation. We may also report illegal or infringing content to law enforcement, government or other authorities. |
| The actual information used depends on the factual circumstances, but could include any of the following: |
We preserve and share information when we seek legal advice or seek to protect ourselves in the context of litigation and other disputes. This includes matters such as violations of our Terms and policies. |
| The actual information used depends on the factual circumstances, but could include any of the following:
|
To promote safety, integrity and security outside of the performance of our contract with you, we:
|
| For ensuring the safety, security and integrity of our Services: |
To improve the WhatsApp customer support service, we:
|
| |
You have the right to object to, and seek restriction of, this processing. To exercise your rights, visit the How To Exercise Your Rights section of this Privacy Policy | ||
We still do not allow third-party banner ads on our Services. We have no intention to introduce them, but if we ever do, we will update this Privacy Policy.
How To Exercise Your Rights
Under applicable data protection law, you have the right to access, rectify, port, and erase your information, as well as the right to restrict and object to certain processing of your information.
This includes the right to object to our processing of your information for direct marketing and the right to object to our processing of your information where we are pursuing our legitimate interests or those of a third-party. We will consider several factors when assessing an objection including: your reasonable expectations; the benefits and risks to you, us, other users, third parties; and other available means to achieve the same purpose that may be less invasive and do not require disproportionate effort. Your objection will be upheld, and we will cease processing your information, unless the processing is based on compelling legitimate grounds or is needed for legal reasons.
You can object to our processing of your information and learn more about your options to restrict the way we use your information by going here. If we use your information for direct marketing, you can always object and opt out of future direct marketing messages using the unsubscribe link in such communications, or by using our in-app "block" feature.
You can access or port your information using our in-app Request Account Info feature (available under Settings > Account). You can access tools to rectify, update, and delete your information directly in-app as described in the Retention of Your Information section.
When we process information you provide to us based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. To withdraw your consent, visit your device-based settings or in-app settings.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Retention of Your Information
We store information for as long as necessary for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy, including to provide our Services, or for other legitimate purposes, such as complying with legal obligations, enforcing and preventing violations of our Terms, to fight spam, or protecting or defending our rights, property and users. The storage periods are determined on a case-by-case basis that depends on the following factors:
- The nature of the information and why it is collected and processed. The length of time we will keep your information will generally be determined by how long we need that information to provide you with our Services, including any optional features you use and to provide customer support.
For example:- As described above, we require certain of Your Account Information to deliver our Services. We need to keep it for the lifetime of your account so that we can maintain your account.
- We keep your User Choices for the lifetime of your account.
- We keep Authentication Information for the lifetime of your account.
- We only need to keep other information as long as necessary to provide optional features to you, such as Your Connections as long as you use contact upload.
- We keep information collected using Cookies for 90 days.
- We generally keep customer support communications for 30 days after they have been dealt with or 90 days after we receive them, whichever is sooner.
- We generally keep User Reports for 90 days.
- In certain cases, we need to keep your information for longer for legal reasons as described under the Legal Reasons section below.
- Legal Reasons. In certain cases, we also keep your information for legal reasons, including after your account has been deleted.
We keep your information:- To respond to a legal request or to comply with applicable law when we have a legal obligation to retain information. For example, if we receive a valid legal request, such as a preservation order or search warrant, related to your account, we preserve your information after you delete your account.
- To deal with and resolve requests and complaints. For example, we generally retain correspondence relating to data subject requests for a year, in case those requests are not resolved and this correspondence is required in order to handle any resulting complaints. In such cases, the correspondence is then retained while those complaints are being resolved.
- For litigation or regulatory matters. For example, we preserve your information where it is reasonably necessary for reasons related to a legal claim or complaint, such as where we are subject to a regulatory investigation or we need to defend ourselves in legal proceedings about a claim related to your information or respond to a regulator in relation to a complaint made by you or someone else.
- Issues relating to the safety, security and integrity of our Services and to protect rights, property and users. For example, we keep information where it is necessary to investigate misuse of our Services, such as spam and other bad experiences. If we disable an account for violating our Terms, we also preserve information about that user for safety, security and integrity purposes.
The actual information that we keep and how long we keep it for depends on the nature of the reason in question.
- Operational Retention Needs. We need to store information in certain cases for operational needs. For example, if a message cannot be delivered immediately, we keep it in encrypted form on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver it. We also store information where necessary for troubleshooting and debugging issues with the Services. We keep the information that we store for this purpose for up to 90 days, provided longer storage is not necessary for investigating and resolving a specific issue, or for legal reasons.
Deleting Your Information
What Happens To Your Information When Your Account Is Deleted? When you delete your WhatsApp account or when it is deleted as a result of inactivity (see About inactive account deletion for information on inactive accounts), we delete the information we have about you, apart from the information listed below which we retain in limited circumstances.
Deleted Information. Your Account Information and any undelivered messages to you are deleted from our servers. You will be removed from all WhatsApp communities and groups. Note that for technical reasons it takes up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete or de-identify your WhatsApp information. Copies of your information may also remain after the 90 days for a limited time in the backup storage that we use to recover lost information in the event of a disaster, software error, or other information loss event.
Information We Retain After Your Account is Deleted.
- If we are analysing or investigating a security incident, in order to maintain the security of our Services, we need to retain Log and Troubleshooting Information associated with the incident that we are reviewing past the normal 90 day deletion period.
- Copies of certain log records remain in our database but are disassociated from personal identifiers which are used for example to measure performance, reliability and efficiency and to operate and improve our Services.
- Your account initially was linked to these records by a randomly generated identifier. To disassociate this information when your account is deleted, we delete the link between this identifier and your account as part of the account deletion process.
- Copies of your information may also be retained for legal reasons after you delete your account in the circumstances described. The information that may be retained and length of time we need to retain it will depend on the specific legal reason we need to retain it for.
For more information on how long we store information, see Retention of Your Information.
Managing Your Information
If you would like to manage, change, limit, or delete your information, you can do that through the following tools:
- Settings. You can change your settings to manage certain information available to other users. You can manage your contacts, groups, and broadcast lists, or use our "block" feature to manage who you communicate with on our Services.
- Changing Your Mobile Phone Number, Profile Name And Picture, And "About" Information. If you change your mobile phone number you must update it using our in-app change number feature and transfer your account to your new mobile phone number. You can also change your profile name, profile picture, and "about" information at any time.
- Deleting Your WhatsApp Account. You can delete your WhatsApp account at any time using our in-app delete my account feature in your in-app settings. Once you initiate the deletion process for your account, that account can no longer be used (i.e. you cannot log in or re-register or access any content (including message history) as it will be deleted). See Deleting Your Information section for more detail on what happens to your information when you delete your account.
Be mindful that if you only delete WhatsApp from your device without selecting the in-app delete my account option in your in-app settings, the Information We Collect will be stored on our servers for a longer period. WhatsApp accounts are generally deleted after 120 days of inactivity. Users are not alerted when this occurs. See our help centre article About inactive account deletion for more information.
Please remember that when your account is deleted, it does not affect your information related to the communities or groups you created (such as community or group names), or the information other users have relating to you, such as their copy of the messages you sent them.
Working With Authorities, Advisors And Industry Partners
We access and share your information described in the Information We Collect section, including sharing with regulators, law enforcement, other government agencies, industry partners/peers such as other online platforms and technology companies, our advisors such as external lawyers who act for us, and others in accordance with the How and Why We Process Your Information and Our Legal Basis for Processing section if we have a good-faith belief that it is necessary to:
- respond pursuant to applicable law or regulations, court orders, legal process, or government requests. For example, sharing with regulators, law enforcement, or other government agencies in response to legal requests or sharing with civil litigants pursuant to court orders;
- detect, investigate, prevent, or address fraud and other illegal activity or security and technical issues. For example, we access and share information with law enforcement, other government agencies, or industry partners such as other online platforms and technology companies to identify and prevent bad actors using our Services for illegal purposes; or
- protect the rights, property and safety of our users, WhatsApp, the Meta Companies, or others, including to prevent death or imminent bodily harm. For example, sharing with law enforcement, in emergency situations where we learn that a person’s life is at risk.
For more information on how we preserve your information for these purposes, please see the Retention of Your Information section.
The processing we carry out will depend on the circumstances. Further information on the different categories of information affected and the legal bases we rely on is set out in the How and Why We Process Your Information and Our Legal Basis for Processing section under the Processing necessary to perform our contract with you, Compliance with a Legal Obligation, Protection of Your Vital Interests or Those of Another Person and Legitimate Interests headings.
Transferring Information to Other Countries
Why is information transferred to other countries?
WhatsApp shares information described in the Information We Collect section of this Privacy Policy globally, both internally within the Meta Companies, and externally with third parties in accordance with this Privacy Policy and our Terms. This includes places where the data centers we rely on are located, and where our other internal Meta Companies and external Third-Party Service Providers are located. These transfers are necessary and essential to enable us to provide the Services set forth in our Terms and globally to operate and provide our Services which allow you to communicate with users and businesses on WhatsApp around the world.
How do we safeguard your information?
When information controlled by WhatsApp is transferred or transmitted to, or stored and processed in other countries, we rely on the following transfer mechanisms:
- Adequacy Decisions: We rely on relevant "adequacy regulations" from the UK Government which recognise that certain countries and territories outside of the UK ensure an adequate level of protection for personal information. We transfer information we collect from the UK to Israel and the EEA in reliance on such adequacy regulations.
- Standard Contractual Clauses: We utilise the UK standard contractual transfer mechanisms approved by the UK Government (the International Data Transfer Agreement and the International Data Transfer Addendum to the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission). For example, WhatsApp uses Meta’s global infrastructure and data centers, which are located around the world including Singapore and within the United States, to store the information described in the Information We Collect section of this Privacy Policy. For a copy of the standard contractual transfer mechanisms, please see our SCC Help Centre article.
While transfers to countries that don’t have an adequacy decision typically take place on the basis of the standard contractual clauses, in certain circumstances, transfers can also take place on the basis of exemptions provided for under data protection law. For example, sharing with law enforcement or in emergency situations where we learn that a person’s life is at risk.
If you have any questions about WhatsApp’s international data transfers you can contact us.
Updates to Our Privacy Policy
We may amend or update our Privacy Policy. We will provide you notice of amendments to this Privacy Policy, as appropriate, and update the “Last Updated" date at the top of this Privacy Policy. Please review our Privacy Policy from time to time.
Contact Us
The Data Protection Officer for WhatsApp can be contacted here.
If you have questions about our Privacy Policy, please contact us or write us here:
WhatsApp LLC
Attn: Privacy Policy
1601 Willow Road Menlo Park,
California 94025, USA