If you have lost or stolen your mobile phone, your data may be in danger but it is also a risk that anyone can access your WhatsApp conversations with all kinds of personal information, photos, messages, videos and practically our entire life in them . If your mobile phone has been stolen or lost , this is what you should do with WhatsApp.
If you have the option of Find my device installed on Android, you can locate your smartphone if it is stolen or lost, but you can also lock the phone until you recover it or even delete the data remotely. But if not, these are the steps you must follow if you want to prevent them from spoofing your identity on WhatsApp and accessing your information or impersonating you. In addition, it is convenient to know everything we can do to prevent our WhatsApp account from being stolen.
What should you do
Even if they seem like too many steps, in just a few minutes you can improve security by following these tips
Lock your SIM card
The first thing you should do is block your SIM card if your mobile phone has been lost or stolen. If there is no access to your card, the account cannot be verified in WhatsApp since the corresponding SMS or the call that is needed to confirm that it is you will not be received. Without the verification code , they will not be able to access the messaging application even if they have your smartphone in their hands. To block the SIM card you have to contact your operator.
Use a new card
Ask your operator for a new SIM card with the same number to activate your WhatsApp on the new device you have. Once you activate it on the phone you are going to use, it will be impossible for someone to use it on the old one since you can only activate a WhatsApp account with a phone number and on a single device at a time.
Notify WhatsApp
Even if you block the SIM card, there is an option to use WhatsApp on your lost or stolen mobile: through a Wi-Fi connection. To avoid this, it is essential that you contact the company in charge of the application to temporarily deactivate your account until you start it on another device.
Send WhatsApp an email with the subject " Stolen / lost phone: Please deactivate my account ". You will have to send this message to WhatsApp support and in the body of the message you will have to enter your full telephone number associated with the WhatsApp account (including the international code, followed by your digits) That is, it would look something like this:
- Recipient: support@whatsapp.com
- Subject: Lost / Stolen Phone: Please deactivate my account
- Message body: + 34XXXXXXXXX
Restore your conversation history
If you already have your new SIM card and want to have your messages on another device, you can restore the conversation history if you had a WhatsApp backup made. First of all, make sure there is a backup activated.
- Open WhatsApp
- Go to Menu
- Access Settings
- Go to Chats
- Activate "Backup"
- Configure when and where to save this backup you just made.
To restore it, all you have to do is log in from the new device . If there is a backup saved, WhatsApp will ask you if you want to restore it. Have a little patience until the process is finished as it may take a few minutes or even hours if the stored file is very heavy. Please be patient and wait for it to complete. So you can have all your messages but also your photos, videos, audios ... All the multimedia content sent or received will thus be transferred to your new mobile phone without any problem.
Will you lose the messages?
No. If you've set up a backup and it was created before your phone was lost or stolen, you can restore your chat history from Android, iOS, or Windows Phone. To do this, it is essential that you note that the configured backup is not local, on the phone itself, but has been made in Google Drive, iCloud or OneDrive and is available in the cloud to restore it. We generally recommend that you make a backup every night automatically with Google Drive so that you can always have access to your messages even if your mobile phone is stolen.
Will you lose your account?
When you deactivate a WhatsApp account, it is not completely deleted. That is, people can send you messages if they want and they can see your profile even if you don't read them or they don't reach you. If you reactivate the account in a period of thirty days, those messages will arrive as usual. If you don't reactivate it within thirty days, the WhatsApp account will be completely deleted and you will lose all your data.
Change your phone number
If you have decided to change your phone number in WhatsApp and have a different one after having stolen or lost your mobile, you can also migrate your contacts and chats directly, without any problem, keeping your user account in the messaging application. You will continue to belong to the same groups or have the same contacts. In addition, the people you had added will be notified that you have changed phone, you will not have to explain it one by one.
- Go to WhatsApp on your mobile phone
- Click on the three dots in the upper right corner
- Go to Account
- Choose the option "Change number"
- Enter old phone number
- Enter the new phone number
Confirm the change and your groups, settings, or account information will be migrated. It will also allow you to notify all your contacts about the number change or choose which contacts you want to notify or which ones not.
Block access to the application
As the saying goes, "prevention is better than cure", the truth is that protecting access to the WhatsApp application by means of a password or our fingerprint will prevent anyone in whom our phone falls into the hands of entering the app and have access to our messages or even be able to impersonate us. If our phone is stolen, WhatsApp may not be the most important thing, but we can prevent them from accessing our conversations or photos.
On this occasion, it is possible to configure the fingerprint protection that WhatsApp itself offers us or use a third-party app that allows us to block access to the application and all the information in our messages with a PIN or password . AppLock is one of the most popular and used in this sense, while we can also make this configuration from the system's own settings or those of WhatsApp. It is even possible to block the messaging app with our face if the mobile has a facial recognition system.
Although it is not a definitive solution, the truth is that preventing them from accessing our chats in this way gives us time to request the blocking of our account from WhatsApp or to make a total blockade of our terminal.
To block fingerprint access, follow these steps:
- Open WhatsApp on your mobile phone
- Tap on the three dots in the upper right corner of the app
- Open the Settings section through the menu or pop-up window
- Once here, open the Account section
- Choose Privacy, the first option
- Go to the bottom of the page and search for Fingerprint Lock
Activate this option and you will need to use your fingerprint to access WhatsApp as well as to unlock the phone.
Delete a WhatsApp account
Whatever the reason, then delete a WhatsApp account permanently. It is not a deactivation process that allows us to return in the next 30 days, but everything that is in the application will be deleted : messages, statuses, chats, videos, audios, photos. It will be final and you will not be able to go back.
- Go to WhatsApp
- Go to the menu button in the upper right corner
- Select Settings
- Go to Account
- Click on "Delete my account"
- Enter your phone number
Lock mobile remotely
In addition to the tips above, you can also lock your phone remotely to prevent theft of personal information among other things.
Lock Android mobile
To block an Android mobile previously there are some conditions that the device has to meet:
The phone must be turned on, it must be logged into a Google account, it must be connected to a Wi-fi network or via mobile data, it must be visible on Google Play, it must have location enabled, and it must have Find my device enabled. .
If we meet these conditions we can go to the page android.com/find and log in with our Google gutter. At that time the phone will receive a notification and on the map we will see the location of the phone. In the web menu we can make the mobile sound at full volume for 5 minutes, even if it is muted.
We can lock the device by PIN, pattern or password. And we can also add a message on the lock screen to facilitate the return. Finally, we have the option of Erase device that removes all the data from the phone.
Lock iPhone
If we have lost or stolen our iPhone, we can block it through the iCloud.com/find page or we can use the Search app from another Apple device. Both from the web and from the app you can see the location of the mobile on the map and if the device is nearby you can play a sound to help you find it.
You can also mark it as lost, at that moment the device locks and displays a message on the lock screen. In addition, you can track their location and if you have cards added to Apple Pay, they will lose the ability to pay. Finally, you can also erase the content of the device to prevent access to personal data.
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