We will explain to you what to do if your WhatsApp account is hacked, so that you can regain control. It does not matter that you are not a famous person, because from time to time there will be a cybercriminal trying to take control of your social accounts, either to use them to access purchases on your behalf, to steal other people’s accounts, or just to annoy. And it never hurts to know how to act in these cases.
To avoid these things, it is advisable to always have the two-step verification of WhatsApp activated so that you need a second message to confirm your account, and never, NEVER forward the SMS that may arrive to anyone to confirm access to the account, although An acquaintance asks you to say that it came to you by mistake, because it could be someone who has also been hacked and that trust can be used to steal it from you too.
The problem is that you can log into WhatsApp from a phone without SIM, or a different one than you normally use. This is done to facilitate use in the case of having more than one phone, but it opens the door for other people to access from other countries in the event that they manage to convince or trick you into sending them an access code that it will arrive by SMS.
Recover your WhatsApp account
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WhatsApp is an application that does not allow you to connect on more than one device at the same time, so when someone logs in from another mobile, they will close later on yours. When this happens, you have to log in again with your mobile by typing the phone number. What happens is that if someone has just connected from another mobile the process is blocked, and you cannot recover your account immediately.
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When sending SMS is temporarily blocked, there is another method which is to click on the option Giving me a call, so that an answering machine calls you to recite the code you must write over and over again. However, when someone else is actively using your account this method does not always work, so you will have to first try to kick out whoever stole WhatsApp before recovering it again.
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When it seems that all is lost, there is another method you can use, half applying the measurements to delete a number that has been stolen. What you have to do is send an email to [email protected], which is the official support account. Inside the mail, you have to write the text Lost / Stolen Phone: Please deactivate my account next to your phone number. You have to send the number in an international code, with +34 in front if it is a Spanish number, or the account of your country in the event that your SIM is from another country.
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When you write this email, WhatsApp will close all sessions of your account, so the attackers will have already lost access. WhatsApp recommends that you change your SIM, but this is only when it has been stolen. With the attackers out, you can now get your number back. Therefore, now enter WhatsApp again, and type your phone to start the login process again.
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When you do, you will return to the screen that says you need to write code. If you’ve been fighting attackers, WhatsApp may tell you to wait a few hours before it can send you the code. To not wait you can click on the button Giving me a call, pick up the call that WhatsApp will make to you (it can be from other countries) and write the code that repeats you over and over again.
And that’s it. When you follow these steps, you should be able to access your account again. Now if you haven’t done it before, it is vital that you activate two-step verification as we explain here so that it is more difficult to steal your account, and that you try to learn from what happened so as not to make it easier for anyone to access it.
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