WhatsApp is an incredibly popular messenger service used by millions upon millions of people around the world. However, just because it is used by many doesn’t mean that it is the best. Plus the fact that it is owned by Facebook has some worried about their personal data being harvested and used for advertising.
If you are concerned about these issues and just want to delete your WhatsApp account, you’ll be pleased to learn that it’s actually rather easy to do, and this is what you need to do if you want to delete your WhatsApp account permanently.
Deleting Your WhatsApp Account
- Open WhatsApp
- Go to Settings
- Tap Account > Delete my account
- You’ll have to enter your number to verify yourself
- You will then be asked to provide a reason why you want to delete your account
Downloading Your Data Before Deleting
Now, since deleting your WhatsApp account is more or less a permanent process, you might want to consider downloading some of your data first, such as your chat logs, if you wish to preserve them. You will also be able to export all the media in the chat and then save them to another place, like your hard drive, the cloud, and so on.
- Open the WhatsApp chat you want to export
- Tap on the name of the chat at the top. For Android, tap the three dot button.
- Tap Export chat. For Android, go to More > Export chat
- Choose whether or not you want to include media like photos or videos
- An extractable file contain your chat and media will be created and you can save it to your phone or send it to your email
Requesting Your Data From WhatsApp
For those who might be a bit concerned about their privacy and what kind of data WhatsApp might have collected on them before they delete their account, you can actually request for a copy of your data from the company. This feature came on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and WhatsApp introduced the feature to reassure users that very little data is collected on users.
However, if you just want to double check for yourself, you can request it easily.
- Go to Settings
- Go to Account > Request account info
- Tap Request report
According to WhatsApp, the company says that a request can take up to three days to process and be made available to users, so you won’t be able to see it right away. However, the app will alert you when the report is ready for viewing. Once it is available:
- Go to Settings
- Go to Account > Request account info
- Tap Download report
- Select Export report > EXPORT and you can then email the report to yourself or save it on your phone
Filed in . Read more about Android, Apps, Facebook, iOS and Whatsapp.