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Recent changes in WhatsApp’s privacy and security policies have caused many of its users to flock to alternative messaging services such as Signal or Telegram. You may also be planning to jump ship and delete your WhatsApp Account, but you also want to download and keep all of the data WhatsApp has collected over the years. This includes WhatsApp chats, media, and more. This guide will show you how you can delete your WhatsApp Account and save the data.
Below we will show you how to delete your WhatsApp account.
How To Delete Your WhatsApp Account
We already have an in-depth guide on how to delete your WhatsApp account but we will go over the steps again here.
Step
Delete WhatsApp Account
- Launch WhatsApp application
- Tap on the three-dotted icon located in the top right corner. From the menu, select “Settings.”
- In the Settings menu, tap on the “Account” option.
- Within the Account settings, you will find various options. Tap on “Delete my account.”
- WhatsApp will ask you to confirm the phone number associated with the account.
- Once you’ve entered your phone number, tap on the “Delete My Account” button.
- You will ask for your reason for deleting the account. You can select a reason from the given options or provide your own feedback. This step is optional.
- A confirmation message will be shown informing you that deleting your account will remove your message history, delete you from all groups, and erase your backups. If you still want to proceed, tap on “Delete My Account.”
- Your WhatsApp account will be permanently deleted. You will be logged out, and your account information will be removed from WhatsApp’s servers
Deleting your WhatsApp account is irreversible, and you will lose all your chat history, media, and contacts associated with that account. Additionally, you will be removed from all the groups you were a part of. WhatsApp says that the complete removal of your account and all data from their servers can take up to 90 days.
WhatsApp has this to say on the issue: “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. Your information isn’t available to you on WhatsApp during this time. Copies of some materials such as log records may remain in our database but are disassociated from personal identifiers.”
How to Save WhatsApp Data
Before you delete your account you will want to save key data from your personal chats. You can request a report from WhatsApp or download certain pieces of data manually.
Requesting account info on WhatsApp
Requesting a report from WhatsApp will take a few days as they have to gather all the data that they have. In order to request account info complete these steps.
Step
Request account information
- Open WhatsApp
- Open Settings
- From the menu go to Account
- Tap on request account info, then select request report.
When your data collection request is ready you will receive a notification. From this notification download the zip file. Within the zip file is all of the data WhatsApp has collected about your account.
Save WhatsApp chat history and media files
Within each chat, you can export the data manually, the steps might slightly differ for an Android device or iOs device but this is easy to do.
Step
Save WhatsApp chat history and media files
- Open WhatsApp
- Enter the chat you want to download data from
- Open the settings menu
- Select More
- You will then be asked which type of files you want to include.
- Once done you must now choose where you’d like to export the data, this could be to Google Drive, iCloud, Gmail, or whichever app you choose.
Final Thoughts
Deleting a WhatsApp account can be a huge decision, especially if it is an account that you have had for several years. But with this guide, you will be able to delete your WhatsApp account and save all of the data that WhatsApp has on you and download precious files and messages from your WhatsApp chats. Do bear in mind that complete deletion from WhatsApp servers can take up to 90 days.
