The WhatsApp privacy policy debacle just doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. The latest from the Facebook-owned WhatsApp is that while they won’t rudely delete your WhatsApp account if you don’t accept the privacy policy, you’ll still lose a whole lot of functionality instead. This includes periodic added restrictions of access to your chat list, notifications and calls. That would be as good or as bad as having your WhatsApp profile deleted, wouldn’t it? The thing is, you may just want to make it easier for WhatsApp by deleting your WhatsApp profile anyway, and perhaps make the switch to Telegram or Signal ahead of the May 15 deadline. And whether you are on Android or iPhone with your WhatsApp app, there are some steps you need to follow before deleting your WhatsApp account and all the good and bad that comes with it.
Don’t want to deal with the WhatsApp Privacy Policy and Terms of Service anymore? For starters, we would want you to be patient and first get a complete file of all the data that WhatsApp has on you. This may take a day or two, but may be worth the wait. For this, open WhatsApp and head to Settings -> Account. Here, you will see an option called Request Account Info. Select that and accept. In a day or two, WhatsApp will have your report ready and you may get a notification for that—else, you can head back to this option in settings and choose the Export Report option. This will basically be an HTML format file that has account information such as your phone number, contact phone numbers, email addresses, status, display photo, device details and which carrier you are connected with at the time on this phone. Secondly, you may want to quickly scroll through the important chats and groups on WhatsApp to save or download any important messages, information or media files.
Now comes the time to exit WhatsApp for good. Open WhatsApp > Settings > Account. Here, you can choose to Delete My Account. WhatsApp will ask you to reverify with the phone number that is signed in and registered on this phone and then you’ll have to tap “Delete My Account”. Mind you, there is no waiting time after this and your era on WhatsApp will end right then and there. You’ll also have no access to any WhatsApp backups saved on Google Drive or Apple iCloud. Mind you, WhatsApp does mention a 90-day window in which the account deletion process is completed. “It may take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete your WhatsApp information. Copies of your information may also remain after the 90 days in the backup storage that we use to recover in the event of a disaster, software error, or other data loss event,” says WhatsApp. However, while this process is happening, your information will no longer be available to you on WhatsApp any longer. WhatsApp also says that while some information may remain in their database, these logs will no longer have any personal identifiers linking back to your account.
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