WhatsApp account banned: how to request a review, and how businesses avoid the next ban

The short answer

If your WhatsApp account is banned, you will see "This phone number can't use WhatsApp" when you open the app, with an option to request a review. Tap Request review: WhatsApp's Help Center says most reviews are completed within 24 hours, and you get a WhatsApp notification with the decision. If the screen has no Request review option, the ban is final and cannot be appealed.

Nobody else can lift a ban. WhatsApp's own article says third-party services can't ban or unban an account, so anyone offering to "unban your number" for a fee is selling something they cannot deliver. This guide explains the different ban messages, what happens to your chats, and how a business can message customers in bulk without putting its number at risk.

Which message are you seeing?

WhatsApp says it bans accounts when it believes activity breaks its Terms of Service, for example spam, scams, or putting users' safety at risk. If you have just bought a new SIM, the previous owner of that number may have caused the ban; request a review and say so.

How to request a review

1. Open WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business on the phone with the banned number.
2. On the ban screen, tap Request review.
3. Wait for the notification. You can check the status by opening the app.

Some practical points from the Help Center that save people a lot of worry:

• WhatsApp reviews one phone number per appeal.
• Contacting WhatsApp outside the review process, or through another person's account, does not speed up the review or change the decision.
• On the WhatsApp Business app, a ban also cancels a Meta Verified subscription, and where the ban is for breaking the business policies the subscription is not refunded.

Temporary bans and restrictions

A temporary ban is WhatsApp's warning shot. Its Help Center links it to unofficial apps (modified copies of WhatsApp made by third parties, downloaded outside the official app stores) and to scraping, which means automatically collecting phone numbers, profile photos or statuses. Uninstall the unofficial app, install the official WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business app, and stop any tool that extracts contacts. If you keep using them, the ban can become permanent.

A restriction is different. With "Your account is restricted right now", you can still chat and call people and groups you have talked to before, but you cannot start chats with new contacts, create groups, add members or use linked devices. You don't need to do anything: the restriction ends on its own. To see the time left, tap New chat and pick a contact you have never chatted with; the pop-up shows the remaining time.

WhatsApp is also testing a separate monthly cap on messages to people who don't reply. We explain that in the WhatsApp new chat limit.

What happens to your chats

While the number is banned you cannot open your chat history or restore a backup. The Help Center says a backup becomes accessible only after the number tied to it is unbanned. After an unban you verify your number again, and you can then restore your backup in the usual way.

If a business depends on old chats for orders or disputes, it is worth exporting important conversations regularly while the account works. Our guide on how to export a WhatsApp chat shows how on Android and iPhone.

After the number is unbanned

Open the app, verify your phone number and restore your chats. Then change whatever caused the ban. The usual business causes, from WhatsApp's list of practices to avoid, are:

• Messaging people who never contacted you or asked to hear from you.
• Bulk messaging, auto-messaging or auto-dialling from the app, including through "bulk sender" software.
• Over-using broadcast lists so that people report your messages; WhatsApp bans accounts that are reported many times.
• Using contact lists you bought or scraped.
• Running a modified, unofficial version of WhatsApp.

How businesses avoid the next ban

The WhatsApp app is built for conversations, not campaigns. If you need to send one offer to thousands of customers, use the WhatsApp Business API, which is designed for that and has published rules:

• Opt-in first. People must agree to receive messages from your named business, and you must honour opt-outs. See our opt-in list guide.
• Approved templates. Outside the 24-hour customer service window, every message is a Meta-approved message template.
• Messaging limits. Your business portfolio can reach 250, 2,000, 10,000, 100,000 or unlimited people a day, and higher tiers come from good quality.
• Quality rating. Blocks and reports lower your quality rating, so send fewer, more relevant messages.

Enforcement on the API is gradual, which gives you room to correct course. Meta's policy enforcement page describes warnings first, then template-sending blocks of 1 or 3 days, then 5, 7 or 30-day blocks on all messages, and an account lock that only an appeal can remove. Each step is shown in Business Support Home with a Request Review option, and Meta says appeal decisions typically take 24 to 48 hours. Serious harms such as scams or child exploitation lead to immediate offboarding.

Worked example

Arjun sells phone accessories and used a desktop "bulk sender" to message 3,000 numbers from a trade-fair list. Within two days his number showed "This phone number can't use WhatsApp". He requested a review and got the number back. He now keeps that number on the WhatsApp Business app for one-to-one chats, connects it to the API through coexistence, collects opt-in with a QR code at his counter, and sends one approved offer template a week to customers who opted in. Our detailed playbook is how to send bulk WhatsApp messages without getting blocked.

Agencies that run WhatsApp for clients can offer this setup under their own brand with a white-label WhatsApp platform.