Some months ago I set up a new phone (as a secondary or spare) with a new O2 SIM and a new number on a Classic PAYG account. The phone works fine. I then installed the WhatsApp app, and registered it to the new O2 number. Fine. It activated. I sent a few WhatsApp messages to selected contacts (about half a dozen) notifying them of this new number. Almost all replied - on that new WhatsApp - to acknowledge. BUT - the next day on that new phone’s WhatsApp, I got a popup saying, “This account is not allowed to use WhatsApp”, with a note saying ‘your chats are still saved’, and a button to “request a review”.
Thinking this was simply a technical glitch, I uninstalled and reinstalled the app. Didn’t help: same popup message. So I sent a review-request to WhatsApp. A couple of days later I got a reply (into my email Inbox) from WhatsApp ''support" which looked very much like an auto-message, with no sender’s name, saying the account had been banned for breaching the Terms of Service. I was baffled.
So I sent a follow-up asking what exactly I had done wrong. I got a further email reply, again from “support” saying, “… We received a large number of complaints about your account ….and to protect our users’ privacy we won’t disclose the nature of the complaints”, and adds that the account/number will remain banned. The message ends, “…responses to this email thread won’t be read”. Which again suggests that this was a stock auto-reply.
The message didn’t seem credible. I had only used the new WhatsApp account for a few hours, sent just half a dozen messages with no links or attachments, and had had perfectly normal replies. So I sent a query via the WhatsApp website asking for clarification - how many complaints and when? I have had no response.
So I’ve been trying to figure out the cause of the problem. One suggestion was that the O2 number now on my new SIM and phone might in the past have been used previously by a spammer/scammer and been blacklisted. But the SIM and its number has been sitting unused for some time before I installed it in a new handset. And anyway the WhatsApp website help pages say “If you’re using a new phone number, it’s possible that the previous owner of your new phone number violated our Terms of Service and this caused the account to be banned. You won’t be penalized for violations by a previous owner of your phone number.” So this implies that WhatsApp are able to establish whether or when any past violations occurred; and they say explicitly that they will not penalise a new user for the actions of a previous owner of the number.
On another forum it has been suggested that the ban is on the account, not the number. This seems illogical as the account depends on, and cannot exist without, a number being registered to it.
I do have a WhatsApp account on my "main" phone - which of course has a different number and is on another network (giffgaff). But I cannot see how or why that would prevent me from setting up WhatsApp on my "new" or spare phone on the O2 network.
The fact that I cannot get a straight answer or any explanation from WhatsApp is almost Kafka-esque. Their first response was that the rules had been breached, but without saying how. The second response referred to a number of complaints, without any substantiating detail as to the number or timing of the complaints. And now - silence. I cannot see any way to seek further clarification or reinstatement of the “new” WhatsApp account.
What can I do?
