WhatsApp: What occurs to your account when your machine will get stolen or misplaced
2 min readWhatsApp solely works when the first machine of a person is related to the web and is turned on. However, what occurs when a person loses their smartphone and are usually not capable of entry WhatsApp on another machine. The messaging platform mentions just a few steps that may be adopted to cease another particular person from accessing or misusing a WhatsApp account. Since there is no such thing as a risk of distant WhatsApp deactivation from one other machine, the person can comply with these steps to be secure.
The very first thing {that a} person ought to do is lock their SIM card. The person ought to name their community supplier as quickly as attainable to lock the SIM card. It will then not be attainable to confirm the account on that telephone once more, as you could be capable of obtain SMS or telephone calls to confirm an account.
After the SIM is locked, the person may have two decisions, use a brand new SIM card with the identical quantity to activate WhatsApp in your new telephone. This is the quickest solution to deactivate your account on the stolen telephone. WhatsApp can solely be activated with one telephone quantity on one machine at a time.
The second possibility will likely be to deactivate the account. To try this, the person must e mail the corporate the phrase “Lost/Stolen: Please deactivate my account” within the physique of the e-mail and embrace the telephone quantity in full worldwide format (use +91 as prefix for Indian numbers).
Once deactivated, contacts can nonetheless see your profile and ship messages, which is able to stay in a pending state for as much as 30 days. If the person manages to reactivate the account earlier than it’s deleted, they’ll obtain any pending messages on the brand new telephone and can nonetheless be in all group chats. In case the person doesn’t activate their account inside 30 days, it will likely be fully deleted.
Even with the SIM card locked and telephone service disabled, WhatsApp can be utilized on Wi-Fi if the person doesn’t contact the corporate with an account deactivation request.
If the person managed to create a backup utilizing Google Drive, iCloud or OneDrive earlier than the telephone went lacking, they may be capable of restore their chat historical past.
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