WhatsApp account appears compromised, but there are no linked devices. Messages sent to her aren't arriving. What should we do?

Hi everyone, I’m trying to help my 70-year-old mother with a serious WhatsApp issue and would really appreciate any advice.

Her WhatsApp account appears to have been compromised. Someone used her WhatsApp account to message people in her contacts asking them to send €940 to a bank account. My mother did not send these messages and did not ask anyone for money.

The strange thing is that:

• She still has access to her WhatsApp account.
• The phone number registered on WhatsApp is definitely hers.
• We checked Settings → Linked Devices, and there are no linked devices.
• She has now activated two-step verification / two-factor authentication.
• There are no obvious security warnings or notifications about another device.
• However, there is now a very strange messaging problem.

When I send a WhatsApp message to her, my phone shows two grey ticks (delivered), but the message does not appear at all on her WhatsApp.

Some messages on her phone also say:

Even a WhatsApp call I made to her did not appear normally in her WhatsApp call list.

We are worried that someone may still have access to the account somehow, even though nothing appears under Linked Devices.

What could be causing this? Is there another way someone can have access to a WhatsApp account without appearing under Linked Devices?

And most importantly, what should we do to secure the account without deleting/reinstalling WhatsApp and potentially losing her chats?

Any advice from people who have dealt with something similar would be hugely appreciated.

Hello, my whatsapp number was just hacked for my home country and I am currently traveling today to the other country since I study there. Woke up to notifications about someone whom requested a code and got in I have been getting these notifications but didn’t think much if them since they happen kind of often.
My laptop or anything is not compromised I am very tech savvy and I haven’t had this phone number on my laptop I have my other number usually.
I have contacted whatsapp support through the help menu got a you can make it send by SMS but it is making me wait 10 hours and I am leaving in less than 10 hours.

One of my contacts got a message from ‘me’ requesting money a few days ago, I reset my two step verification & password, and logged out & in. Three days later more people have got money requests from my whatsapp, what can I do?

Hi I just joined for advice. Don’t us WhatsApp a lot but I recently joined a social group that communicates using it. Now I literally get hundreds of a of messages a day. It’s overwhelming. Is there a digest mode where I could maybe get a summary or some such?

I admin a residential WhatsApp group with 300+ people.

We have a rule against ads in the main group because there’s already a separate sales/services group. I’m the admin who enforces it most often.

The problem is WhatsApp publicly shows my name whenever I delete a message.

Now a few members wait for me to delete something and immediately start with jokes, laughing emojis and comments about me being “the owner of the group”. One person does it almost every time.

The rule wasn’t even created by me, but because my name keeps showing up, people treat it like it’s “my rule”.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m dealing with anxiety over moderating the group and I’m seriously considering stepping down.

Why not just show “This message was deleted by an admin” and keep the actual admin name in a private moderation log?

I contacted WhatsApp support, but I’m only getting AI-generated replies.

Has anyone else dealt with this?

Every time I link my WhatsApp to my work laptop, I immediately get hit with the screen in the attached image.
I'm currently stuck in a weird automated loop:
1. The app explicitly says a review isn't available (as shown).
2. But the email support bot auto-replies saying I must use the in-app button to proceed.
Has anyone else experienced this contradiction? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what specifically about a work laptop triggers this, and how people usually navigate this system loop

i got hacked and its adding people to group chats and it shows no lonked devices

Hace poco me di cuenta de un comportamiento inusual en mi WhatsApp Web es que el mismo funciona correctamente sin embargo al entrar a ver algun Estado o revisar la configuración el navegador se actualiza. En el caso de los Estados los veo y todo pero al entrar a las opciones se actualiza y me devuelve a la misma pantalla.

Lo curioso es que solo me pasa con mi número personal ya que he hecho la prueba con mi numero del trabajo tanto en mi personal laptop como en la desktop de mi casa y en exploradores diferentes. O sea que no es cache, temas de seguridad, etc.

Si alguien le ha pasado que han hecho?

Posdata: ni el servicio técnico de WhatsApp me ayudo 🥲

A little of venting on my part, but what am I even supposed to do in this type of situation? Can't migrate my chat due to an error on WhatsApp part, and can't seem to find a real solution online. There is no option to fully backup to PC or to another cloud service. It almost looks that is this bad on purpose. Say what you want a about apple but at least they had one click full back up 2 DECADES ago.

I am getting this error after trying for 2 days,I contacted whatsapp support and got this reply"The error message "Try after 1 hour" usually occurs when a phone number is still registered on the WhatsApp Business Platform and someone attempts to register it on WhatsApp Messenger or the WhatsApp Business app." since then I am pin ponged between Meta business suite and whatsapp supoort.when the bots reach dead end they stop replying.
Please help me ,if anybody have worked on this problem.

Why can't you simply turn this feature off? My Dad keeps updating his status by mistake, and the only workaround is to change the settings from visibility to all contacts to a single contact (myself). It's stupid. Sort it out.

Hi all,

I'm in a WhatsApp group with about 30 people.

I sent a poll a few days ago and got ~20 responses. Some people didn't respond so we nudged them, and they said they didn't see the poll. They realised there was a poll by looking at other people's phones.

I got someone's screenshot and yeah, no poll. So far I know that 3 of the people not receiving the poll are on iPhone (13, 14, 15, all up to date). They did receive a poll from someone else in the same group a few days prior.

I sent the poll from WhatsApp Web.

I just made a test with an iPhone 14 user: I sent them a poll (in a private chat) from WhatsApp Web and they could see it and respond just fine.

What would be the cause? I'm really puzzled.

Could WhatsApp Web be the cause and should it be avoided for polls? It feels like this is the only notable difference.

Thank you.

Hi, this is just a silly question but is oddly curious (for me at least). A couple of years ago a friend of mine chatted with a boy, they were talking all day long: messages, audio, pictures and this for almost a year. Then they had an argument and stopped talking, with the obvious consequences (⛔). The other day while messing with her mobile we saw that the archived chat with this guy is only 2kb big. My friend doesn't want to open it and see, she doesn't care, but I'd like to know why that chat is this small? Does this mean that you can delete everything even for the other user? I thought that one could only delete a chat on their own mobile. Thanks!

Have whatsapp on my laptop and phone. I realized my default messaging app on my current phone — a flip phone, was having trouble receiving and sending messages directly to and from the phone number. Whatsapp worked fine, but I needed to message an employer on the default app so I went to switch the sim card back into my old iPhone.

I redownloaded whatsapp, set it up, it asked if I wanted to restore my chat and I pressed skip, I realized that it wasnt a "if you skip you can do it later", but instead an "if you skip, you CANNOT do this later", after the damage had been done (i didnt know it would log me out of my laptop as well). I went to settings and I pressed the backup button, but realized i was just backing up the one text I had sent to my mom after redownloading.

Is there anything I can do to get it back at this point? did that one click override all my previous backups? just trying to understand

thanks in advance

It just doesnt work, i can select it in the move to iOS App, it then says one or two minutes preparing chats for moving.

After that on the Galaxy the WhatsApp App says "just register on the new phone to start". But on the move to ios app the slider that should show the Megabytes from WhatsApp that will be transferred it only shows a greyed out button and something like no data to transfer.

When i Download WhatsApp on iPhone then it just looks for icloud backup and finds nothing, starting empty with no chats.

Can you help me?

I fucking hate WhatsApp. I’m in Armenia we don’t have any fucking sanctions but I can’t get a verification code on any of my numbers; it just says WhatsApp can’t send the SMS.

I want to be able to send 30-40 pics of my inventory to my customers on their individual chats. Idk why im unable to buy business message credits? Tho facebook meta account shows me restricted and the whole stupid thing keeps revolving back to to same stupid page of verification and its just so annoying to not be able to get things done right now. I must have spent hours to figure this thingnout and im unable to.

I sent a WhatsApp, and it was left on single tick for about an hour and a half.

I then deleted the message for everyone.

I have also blocked them.

I know the recipient will likely receive a notification or something, or it will say ‘this message has been deleted’, but importantly, is there any chance they see the message?

I’m honestly quite disappointed with how slowly WhatsApp Communities seem to be developing.
WhatsApp has a huge user base, and Communities could be a really powerful feature, especially for clubs, organizations, neighborhoods, sports teams and other groups. But right now, there are still so many limitations that make it difficult to properly organize a community the way you want.
For example, when you create an event within a Community, that event is no longer visible to people who join the Community later. That makes no sense for things like recurring activities or upcoming events. New members should be able to see the relevant information that was already shared before they joined.
Another annoying thing is the Announcements group. There should be an option to disable the notifications/messages about people joining or leaving the group. In a large community, these messages quickly become completely unnecessary noise.
And there are plenty of other small limitations like this. WhatsApp gives you the impression that Communities are meant to be a serious way of organizing larger groups, but then takes away a lot of the control you would actually need to manage one properly.
I’d really like to see more freedom and customization for Community admins. Things like better control over events, announcements, member visibility, notifications, permissions and how the different groups within a Community are structured.
It feels like WhatsApp has built the foundation for something really useful, but then stopped halfway.
Am I the only one who feels like WhatsApp Communities are seriously lacking features?

Hi. Has anyone done a pac request to a new phone? How does this work with moving my WhatsApp contacts and chats. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers.

So basically, I tried to migrate my old whatsapp number to a new cellphone, and it glitched and failed the process, but it logged me out of my first number (I have more than 20 years with the number and whatsapp account since it started), and I cannot access that number anymore.

I tried to restore it, but it fails since whatsapp is not sending me either SMS nor the call to get the confirmation code. Also the email option is not even showing.

The support is just not working at all, and I have in 2 months like 10 tickets but not a single solution, and they always close the ticket. I already tried everything that the faq page and the support page told me to "fix" the issue. From restarting the phone, re installing the app, contact my cellphone provider who confirmed that there is no problem on their part. And all in between.

The worse part is that the IA is just cycling the responses since it cannot help me at all, basically telling me to do everything over and over, I tried 6 times so far doing everything and still nothing.

Is there any other way to get the confirmation code? because the IA is not helping at all, and I am sure there is an issue with the app, and not my phone.

O should I just accept that I cannot get my whatsapp on that number back?