Why And How We Process Your Data:

Why And How We Process Your Information

Key Information Categories Used

The actual information used depends on your factual circumstances, but could include any of the following:

To assist you in creating and managing your WhatsApp account by:

• collecting and verifying your phone number by sending you a verification code via SMS or by calling you.
• checking the operating system and other features of your device to set up WhatsApp correctly on your device, and running security checks to make sure you don’t already have an account or a phone number that is banned from WhatsApp.
• recording your user preferences, including the Terms you accepted, your privacy settings and the users you’ve blocked.
• facilitating you adding additional information, such as your photo or facial characteristics used to create your avatar if you choose to create one, or Account Information such as a profile picture, “about” information which is displayed to people who have your phone number, in line with your privacy settings.
• changing the phone number associated with your WhatsApp account when you update it.
• in order to maintain security, limit data retention and protect your privacy, checking for activity every 30 days and deleting your account where your phone has not been online for 120 days (in general). Learn more in our Help Center here.
• deleting your account, at your request (see how to delete your account on your iPhone and on your Android device) or in accordance with our Terms. We may take steps to ban your account if there is a breach of our Terms, for example a breach of our “Acceptable Use of Our Services” terms.
• enabling you to re-register your account when it has been deactivated or locked.

For creating and managing your account:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Cookies
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)

To facilitate you using and managing your WhatsApp account on multiple devices by:

• linking a new device to your account so that you can use WhatsApp on additional devices and so that we can register certain additional devices on our servers.
• syncing Your Account Information and preferences across your devices by sending an update to other devices linked to your account.
• sending an end-to-end encrypted copy of your chat history to your new companion devices when you sync your chats.

For linking a device to your account:

• Your Account Information
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

For syncing your Account Information and preferences across your devices:

• Your Account Information
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

For syncing your chat history across your devices:

• Your Account Information
• Your Messages (your messages, images, audio and videos are encrypted using the Signal encryption protocol)
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

To send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages and broadcast your Status, we:

• enable you to reply to, forward and delete messages, or to send different types of messages such as voice messages, “View Once” or disappearing messages.
• if the recipient’s device is online on WhatsApp, deliver messages directly to their device. If your device or the recipient’s device is offline, we store the encrypted message for up to 30 days as we attempt to deliver the message and send a push notification to the device.
• show when you are online or indicate activity to recipients in a chat, such as displaying your ‘last seen’ to recipients according to your preferences.
• enable you to search the web for images to use as a community or group profile picture or to share videos from third-party services such as YouTube. Where that link is a video, we display a preview and allow the recipient to view it within the chat.
• allow you to broadcast your Status updates with contacts of your choice. Status updates disappear after 24 hours.
• take precautions to ensure your messages are conveyed correctly.
• enable you to add visual effects or backgrounds to your media (such as your photos).
• optimise the sending of media files by storing them temporarily for up to 30 days in encrypted form on our servers to aid in more efficient delivery.
• enable you and third parties, like businesses, to communicate and interact with each other using our services such as catalogs for businesses on WhatsApp where you can browse products and services and place orders - remembering that users have to opt-in to chat with businesses.
• If you choose to use Meta AI:
  
  • Enable you to send messages to and receive messages from Meta AI.
  • Suggest prompts when you’re using the search feature for you to send to Meta AI.
• use cookies to operate and provide our web-based Services.

To send and receive end-to-end encrypted messages and to broadcast your Status:

• Your Account Information
• Your Messages (your messages, images, audio and videos are encrypted using the Signal encryption protocol)
• Status Information (which is also end-to-end encrypted)
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Cookies

For showing your presence and last seen:

• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information

For showing your activity indicators:

• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information (whether you are typing or pausing typing, or recording a voice note)

For sharing your Status:

• Status Information (which is also end-to-end encrypted)
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information

To generally operate, provide and improve our Services, we:

• analyse log information to resolve crashes and user issues.
• collect information for troubleshooting, diagnostics and debugging.
• collect and aggregate activity, system events and metrics (such as messaging volume and latencies) to monitor service performance, reliability, and efficiency, so we can ensure and optimise service quality.
• collect and aggregate information (such as message receipts) for billing businesses (where applicable).
• test out and experiment with new features to see if they work as expected.
• generate and validate metrics to understand how and how often our Services are used and how this compares to usage across the Meta Companies, in order to inform and improve product direction and development and forecast future adoption of the service or features.
• undertake experiments to evaluate the impact of new features.
• analyse how and how many users use our different features (e.g., the percentage of our users updating their Status, deidentified business search queries) to allow us to identify what aspects of the service we can improve.
• invite you to take surveys or provide feedback and analyse your responses to gain insights into users’ views (for example, about the Service and Meta Companies).

To generally operate, provide and improve our Services:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Device and Connection Information

To enable you to connect with businesses, we:

• use information, including your business interactions and deidentified search queries, to enable, improve, and customize your search and browsing experience, and to improve the Service.

To enable you to connect with businesses:

• Your Account Information
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)

For making, receiving, joining or leaving voice and video calls, we:

• establish an end-to-end encrypted connection for audio/video information between you and the other call participant (or participants if you are in a group call) after checking the participant’s privacy settings to see if they have blocked you.
• enable you to add visual effects or backgrounds to your video calls.
• enable you to create and send call links.
• send you a push notification if you are receiving or have missed a call.
• notify participants in a group call when:
  • another user has been invited but has not accepted the call,
  • another user starts to ring,
  • another user joins the call,
  • a call participant has left, and
  • the call is over.

When you change your in-app settings or take certain actions in a call, we let the other call participant(s) know the following:

• whether your video is on or off.
• when you invite other users to switch from an audio to a video call (or vice versa).
• when you have not heard from the other call participant(s).
• when you turn mute on or off.
• when your battery is below 5% and not charging.
• when you get an incoming call that interrupts your ongoing call on WhatsApp.

To optimise call quality, we:

• swap to alternative networks interfaces where your existing connection is limited, and collect aggregated call metrics (for iOS only).
• track metrics such as failed calls, number of calls ended due to disconnection and measure network link conditions to identify and resolve call quality issues.
• store performance information on your device after the call, so it is easier to set up a call with the same user(s) again.
• collect metrics about calls and aggregate them to optimize call quality.
• back up your data usage and time spent on a call.
• exchange network and other information during a call to adjust audio, video and network quality.

For making, receiving, joining or leaving voice and video calls:

• Your Account Information
• Your Messages (your messages, images, audio and videos are end-to-end encrypted using the Signal encryption protocol)
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)

For notifying call participants about changes during a call:

• Device and Connection Information

For optimising call quality:

• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

To help you discover if your contacts are WhatsApp users when you choose to sync your device’s address book and manage your contacts on WhatsApp using contact upload, we:

• regularly identify other WhatsApp users in your address book, add them to your WhatsApp contact list and store cryptographic hash values of the phone numbers of your contacts who are not WhatsApp users, so we can quickly update your WhatsApp contacts if those contacts sign-up to WhatsApp at a later date.
• securely save your contacts on WhatsApp to allow you to manage them on linked devices and restore them on any device.
• remove contacts from your WhatsApp contact list if one of your contacts no longer has an account.
• at your request, block phone numbers of other users to prevent them from contacting you on WhatsApp.

To enable you to use contact upload:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information

To allow you to create, join, leave and connect in communities and groups to communicate with multiple contacts at the same time, we:

• check that phone numbers you are trying to add to a group are WhatsApp users and check to ensure that their admission to the group is in line with their privacy settings.
• check to ensure that the community or group name and optional community or group description meets WhatsApp requirements.
• store information about the community or group and its participant users (including any pending or past participant users) for example, to ensure that the appropriate privileges are applied and assign the creator of the community or group as an admin so that they can control and personalise community’s or group’s information, membership and settings.
• when a community or group is active, log when you send invites to new community or group participants and for groups, expire non-accepted invitations within a set period.
• notify participants in the group of certain key changes to the community or group, such as changes to the community or group name, description or profile picture or when a message is deleted. After you exit a group, your phone number will appear in the past participants list of the group for up to 60 days from the time you exited the group.
• temporarily store information to protect you from being re-added to groups you chose to leave and store the phone numbers of participants who are banned for example, from groups to ensure that they cannot rejoin. This information is also used to help identify any suspicious users or abusive behaviour where there is a high turnover of participants.
• allow you to appoint other community admins to a community you’ve created or you are a community admin of, and appoint a new group admin or community admin when the current admin (or admins) leave the group or community, or delete their account.
• delete a group when its last member leaves.
• suspend, or deactivate a community, and add or disconnect groups within the community.

For creating a group or community:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

For administering active groups or communities:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

To assist you to create backups of your chat history (and media within the chat history), when you request it by:

• enabling you to upload a backup of your chat history to a third-party cloud-based service (like Google Drive or iCloud).
• end-to-end encrypt your chat history with a randomly generated encryption key or password you create. You can upload these encrypted backups of your chat history to a third-party cloud-based service (like Google Drive or iCloud).
• using an encryption key or your password to retrieve an encryption key to decrypt your backed-up chat history.

For allowing you to create, access and restore backups and encrypted backups:

• Your Account Information
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information

To allow you to use our payments related services, when you choose to use it, we:

• process additional information about you to complete transactions and enable you to communicate with businesses, determine your eligibility for payments, register you as a payments user, complete your purchases and financial transactions (for example, information about your payment method, shipping details and transaction amount), provide and improve payments services, perform analytics and other activities as described in the applicable policies.

To allow you to use our payments services:

• Your Account Information
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Transactions And Payments Data

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:

• verify accounts on an ongoing basis, and check that user sign-ups are genuine.
• log events and aggregated counts about community, group and user actions on our Services (like the number of groups joined) and related sequences like patterns in registration and repetitive or identical User Reports to identify and investigate suspicious users, abusive behaviour, threats to the security of our Services or where a fake WhatsApp app or an imitation of our Services is being used.
• investigate and address violations of our Terms. For example, we may ban your account when we learn that you are engaged in infringing activities.
• detect, prevent and combat harmful or unlawful behaviour which threatens the security of our user’s information or the Service, such as to combat scraping by bad actors at scale, or our efforts to detect and prevent spam, and bad experiences.
• collect app verification information from anti-abuse services to aid our efforts, such as preventing malicious actors from trying to take over your account.

To ensure the safety, security and integrity of our Services:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information)
• Your Messages (only if provided by a user)
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Cookies
• Information Others Provide About You
• User Reports
• Businesses on WhatsApp
• Third-Party Service Providers
• Third-Party Services

To transfer, store or process your information across borders. 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 externally with our partners and service providers, and with those with whom you communicate around the world, in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We carry out necessary transfers outside your home country or territory, including to the United States and other countries, to:

• operate and provide our Services. We also allow you to share information and connect with your family and friends around the globe; and
• allow us to fix, analyse and improve our Services.

For more information, see Our Global Operations section of WhatsApp Privacy Policy.

To operate and provide our Services:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information)
• Your Messages (your messages, images, audio and videos are encrypted using the Signal encryption protocol)
• Status Information (which is also end-to-end encrypted)
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Cookies
• Information Others Provide About You
• User Reports
• Businesses on WhatsApp
• Third-Party Service Providers
• Third-Party Services

To communicate with you on Services-related issues, we:

• identify relevant Service-related notifications for you, send them to you on WhatsApp and keep a log when you have received the notification. For example, when our Terms are updated we’ll provide a notification about the update (as appropriate).

For sending you notifications or updates about our Services:

• Your Account Information
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Usage And Log Information (details of the notifications you have previously received)
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)

To provide customer support by:

• processing requests for support and / or searches you make within the WhatsApp Help Center, in the app or via the WhatsApp website.
• responding when you request our help such as assisting with your account login or verification process.

For providing you with customer support:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Cookies

To collect information through the device-based settings which you have enabled, for example:

• collecting and using precise location information from your device with your permission when you choose to use location-related features, like when you decide to share your location with your contacts, search and browse for businesses, view locations nearby or locations others have shared with you. There are certain settings relating to location-related information which you can find in your device settings or the in-app settings, such as location sharing. Precise location information which you share in your chats is end-to-end encrypted, which means no one can see it except the people you shared with.
• accessing your camera and / or photo gallery if you choose to share photos or media with your WhatsApp contacts or use optional features like avatars or visual effects. Photos and media that you share in your personal chats are end-to-end encrypted.

To collect information through the device-based settings which you have enabled:

• Your Account Information
• Your Messages (your messages, images, audio and videos are encrypted using the Signal encryption protocol)
• Location Information (WhatsApp cannot see your precise location, which is end-to-end encrypted)

To comply with a legal obligation, for example:

• to access, preserve or disclose certain information if there is a valid legal request from a regulator, law enforcement or others.
• to implement technical and organisational measures to protect your information on WhatsApp.

To comply with a legal obligation:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information)
• Your Messages (only if provided by a user)
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• User Reports
• Cookies
• Information Others Provide About You
• Businesses on WhatsApp
• Third-Party Service Providers
• Third-Party Services

To respond to legal requests, for example:

• to preserve and share information with others, including law enforcement, where we have a good faith belief it is required by law in the relevant jurisdiction and it is consistent with internationally recognized standards including human rights, due process, and the rule of law.
• to share information with law enforcement or industry partners/peers such as other online platforms and technology companies to combat abusive or illegal behaviour.

To respond to legal requests:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)

To protect your vital interests or those of another person, for example:

• to apply automated processing techniques and conduct manual (human) review.
• to 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.
• to investigate reports of harmful conduct and take appropriate action, such as taking action on user accounts (such as banning them) or 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.
• to compare profile pictures, community or 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).
  

To protect your vital interests or those of another person:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information)
• Your Messages (only if provided by a user)
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage And Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Cookies
• Information Others Provide About You
• User Reports
• Businesses on WhatsApp
• Third-Party Service Providers
• Third-Party Services

For business intelligence and analytics, including by:

• counting users and events for reporting to identify how many users WhatsApp has (and similar metrics) so we can share these metrics with affiliates, regulators and the public. This includes metrics like how many unique users WhatsApp has across the Meta Companies by establishing which of our users don't use other Meta apps.
• validating metrics and analysing the feedback you provide (e.g., via surveys), to understand how and how often our Services are used, and how this compares to usage across the Meta Companies, to gain insights, inform business planning and forecasting.
  
• aggregating user data, including user interaction with businesses, to create reports for businesses which provide insights into the businesses use of our Service. These reports include metrics or statistical information such as the countries where the users are located, with whom they communicate or how many messages the business sent in a month.

For business intelligence and analytics:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Cookies
• Businesses on Whatsapp
• Third-Party Service Providers
• Third-Party Services

For providing marketing communications to you, by:

• collecting and storing your information and using it to send marketing communications to you.

For providing marketing communications to you:

• Your Account Information
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)

To seek legal advice or to protect ourselves in the context of litigation and other disputes, by:

• preserving and sharing information in matters such as violations of our Terms and policies.

To seek legal advice or seek to protect ourselves in the context of litigation and other disputes:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information)
• Your Messages (only if provided by a user)
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Cookies
• Information Others Provide About You
• User Reports
• Businesses on WhatsApp
• Third-Party Service Providers
• Third-Party Services

To promote safety, integrity and security outside of the performance of our Services. We use information we have and apply automated data processing techniques and, in some instances, conduct manual (human) review to:

• log User Reports, user's feedback about other users, aggregated events and actions to identify and understand the techniques being used by the bad actors that may interfere with the Services, including your use of the Services.
• identify, analyse, and investigate patterns of suspicious, harmful or fraudulent behavior like scams or other potential violations of our policies and Terms. We may ban your account when we learn that you are engaged in infringing activities.
• check to ensure that User Reports are genuine and that community or group name, description or profile picture comply with WhatsApp's Terms and Policies.
• invite you to take surveys or provide feedback and analyse your responses to resolve issues
• in limited circumstances request a copy of your id documentation or other authentication information, or ask that you take certain actions to verify you are the true owner of a specific WhatsApp account.

To promote safety, integrity and security outside of the performance of our Services:

• Your Account Information
• Your Connections
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• User Reports

To improve the WhatsApp customer support service, we:

• track information about your interactions with our customer support team to understand if issues are being resolved in a timely manner and whether the information provided in our FAQs are helpful.
• run quality assurance checks on our interactions with our customers.
• request and review information you provide in customer satisfaction feedback surveys.
• log search queries in our Help Center to build an index of common search queries to keep our Help Center up to date with relevant content.

To improve the WhatsApp customer support service:

• Your Account Information
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Transactions And Payments Data
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information
• Cookies
• User Reports

If user chooses to add their WhatsApp account to Accounts center, to generally operate, provide and improve our Services, including WhatsApp in Accounts Centre and facilitate the functioning of features and experiences on WhatsApp, such as:

• To develop new features or update existing Accounts Center features.
• To enable you to adjust account info and settings to match them across accounts.
• To enable you to use cross app experiences. For example, sharing your WhatsApp Status to a Facebook or Instagram account that is in the same Accounts Centre as your WhatsApp account.
• To enable you to use single sign on to easily register or re-register to WhatsApp if your device is already logged in to a Facebook or Instagram account that is in the same Accounts Centre as your WhatsApp account.
• To analyze log information to resolve crashes and user issues, collect information for troubleshooting, diagnostics and debugging issues; monitor service performance, reliability, and efficiency; and test out and experiment with new features on WhatsApp in Accounts Centre to see if they work as expected.
• To share information with the other Meta Companies for Meta to do things like, provide, personalize, and improve Meta Company Products and services, including to connect you to content you might like or show you ads
• To generate and validate metrics to understand how and how often WhatsApp in Accounts Centre is being used, in order to inform and improve product direction and development, and forecast future adoption of features in Accounts Centre.
• To undertake experiments to evaluate the impact of new features in Accounts Center.
• To debug, troubleshoot and optimize service performance reliability when you remove your WhatsApp account from the Accounts Centre.
• Checking in order to help determine that you are the minimum age to use WhatsApp services.

To generally operate, provide and improve our Services, including WhatsApp in Accounts Centre:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information and identifiers related to other Meta Company Product accounts).
• Status Information (which is also end-to-end encrypted)
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information (including identifiers to connect your WA account to Accounts Center)
• User Reports
• Information we collect for Channels

To share information with the Meta Companies to promote safety, security, integrity and for legal purposes across the Meta Company Products, including by:

• Securing systems.
• Combating harmful conduct.
• Detecting and preventing spam, threats to IT security or our systems, abuse, or infringement activities.
• Investigating suspicious activity.
• Responding pursuant to applicable law or regulations, to legal process or to government requests.
• Enforcing applicable terms and policies, including for investigations of potential violations.
• Detecting, investigating, preventing and addressing fraud and other illegal activity.
• Protecting the rights, property, and safety of our users, WhatsApp, the Meta Companies, or others, including to prevent death or imminent bodily harm.

To share information with the Meta Companies to promote safety, security, integrity and for legal purposes across the Meta Company Products:

• Your Account Information
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information
• Location Information (general location information, but not precise location)
• User Reports

To share information with the Meta Companies, when you engage with optional experiences, to:

• Associate your WhatsApp account with other Meta Company Product accounts in an Accounts Centre and share your information with Meta Companies.
• Provide Meta Pay or Meta’s checkout experiences on WhatsApp and for payments related integrity purposes.
• Support business conversations when you start a chat from Facebook or Instagram with a business that has recently advertised to you to help the business understand the performance of those advertisements and to improve Meta ads and your experience on those apps. When this happens, WhatsApp does not share the content of those conversations and users can stop chatting with a business at any time.
• To support conversations with businesses that you have given permission to send you offers and announcements to help businesses understand the performance of those offers and announcements, help businesses send you relevant messages, reduce spam, and to improve Meta ads . When this happens, WhatsApp does not share the content of those conversations and you can stop chatting with a business at any time.
• Verify your WhatsApp account if you have chosen to share your verification info with WhatsApp on Facebook or Instagram.
• Verify your Facebook or Instagram account if you have chosen to share your verification info with Facebook or Instagram on WhatsApp.
• Provide measurement and analytics to create reports for businesses with insights into the businesses' use of Meta Companies Products.
• Cross-post your WhatsApp Status to your Facebook or Instagram Story, subject to Meta’s Privacy Policy.
• Add a WhatsApp group to a Facebook event.
• Support the correct operation of Meta AI, such as delivering responses to the right chat.

To share information with the Meta Companies for these purposes:

• Your Account Information (including Age Information and identifiers to connect your WA account to Accounts Center)
• Status Information (learn more in our Help Center here)
• Transactions And Payments Data (for Brazil, for example, see here)
• Usage and Log Information
• Device and Connection Information (including identifiers to connect your WA account to Accounts Center)
• Third-Party Services
• Customer Support and Other Communications
• Information we collect for Channels