Keep this in mind for the safety of your WhatsApp account.
Many people have a habit of using SIM cards of two companies in one mobile. He has activated a WhatsApp account on one of those numbers. Then sometimes it happens that they change their mind and stop recharging or paying the bill for either company's mobile number. He may have used the same number in WhatsApp.
Now watch the fun. An active SIM card is required only when activating an account on WhatsApp. Because an OTP comes on it to ensure that the number is ours. In this way, after the WhatsApp account is created, even if we stop using the SIM card of that number, the account of the same number continues on WhatsApp (taking advantage of this, many people go abroad and continue to run WhatsApp on Indian mobile numbers).
Now the number we stop using can be allotted by the company to any other person after a certain period of time (usually six months). Suppose the person who got our old number wants to open his new WhatsApp account on the same number.
As a result, when he tries to open an account after installing WhatsApp, he will receive an SMS from WhatsApp on that number with an OTP (till then our WhatsApp account is active on that number, but for us the number is deactivated. So the OTP from WhatsApp is obviously new. a person will get). The person will confirm that the number is his by giving the OTP and the WhatsApp account will be activated on his mobile - which was ours till now! With that we will logout from the WhatsApp account in our mobile.
What is the situation now?
In this situation, our old number will be saved in the number of acquaintances, then our name will appear in WhatsApp because they have saved the number in our name. But whatever image or name the new person has chosen will appear in the profile picture and as the name of the WhatsApp account. The data in our WhatsApp account is saved in our mobile, so the new person will not see all of it.
But during the account switching period any messages our acquaintances send us will be delivered to the new person's account instead of ours. Not only this change in the account will not be noticed by our acquaintances, then whoever sends the message thinking that they are sending us the message will now reach the new person and he will be able to see it.
Know even more worrying thing - all the groups we were part of on WhatsApp with that old mobile number, the new person will also be automatically part of the group. It means that even a complete stranger will be included as a member in our family group. The new person will not be able to see the old messages in the group, but we will not be able to see all the new conversations in the group, but the new person will be able to see them.
What can we do to avoid such situation?
The first thing is to always use the same mobile number in WhatsApp that we keep on constantly. If we want to stop using any mobile number, if there is a WhatsApp account on that number, we must first delete it.
Secondly, as we have seen, when a new person tries to activate WhatsApp from our old number, the OTP message from the company is apparently received by the new person. We can't stop it but WhatsApp company gives us an additional security system. We can set up two-step verification for our account. For this, we can choose a six-digit PIN by going to the account in the settings of WhatsApp and activating the one-step verification. Only we know this pin. Not even the WhatsApp company. While setting a pin we can tell our email address to WhatsApp. So that if we forget the PIN in future, we can get the link to reset it on the given email address.
Thus the step of setting the PIN is very important by turning on the two-step verification in the WhatsApp settings. When we ourselves try to activate WhatsApp with the same number in a new device, apart from the OTP coming from the company, we also have to give this PIN that we know only. As the new person does not know this PIN, he cannot activate our WhatsApp account in his mobile.
If you turn on two-step verification in all other online accounts on the Internet, you have to enter the two-step verification pin every time you log into it. Not so in WhatsApp. We can open the WhatsApp app and use it as usual without giving the pin. The company randomly asks for our PIN once every week just to make sure we don't forget it. At that time we can enter WhatsApp only after giving the pin.
Hackers can also take advantage.
If you remember earlier we talked about this very issue in detail in a previous blog. But then the focus was on how a hacker can take full control of our WhatsApp account by taking advantage of WhatsApp's two-step verification system. Those people do something such that they can get the OTP coming to us in their mobile. At that time, if we have not set up two-step verification, the hacker gets caught in his craft.
While what we have talked about today is not about hackers. Here we are talking about a common person like us. Just to understand how our mobile number gets closed by him and our WhatsApp account is closed and found by a new person. In both these cases if we have already turned on two-step verification for WhatsApp
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