Assessment of Decision-Maker: What information has been provided? 464. The identified section of the Privacy Policy provides as follows: “Managing And Deleting Your Information We store information until it is no longer necessary to provide our services, or until your account is deleted, whichever comes first. This is a case-by-case determination that depends on things like the nature of the information, why it is collected and processed, and relevant legal or operational retention needs. If you would like to manage, change, limit, or delete your information, we allow you to do that through the following tools: … Deleting Your WhatsApp Account. You may delete your WhatsApp account at any time (including if you want to revoke your consent to our use of your information) using our inapp delete my account feature. When you delete your WhatsApp account, your undelivered messages are deleted from our servers as well as any of your other information we no longer need to operate and provide our Services. Be mindful that if you only delete our Services from your device without using our in-app delete my account feature, your information may be stored with us for a longer period. Please remember that when you delete your account, it does not affect the information other users have relating to you, such as their copy of the messages you sent them.” 465. I note, however, that further information has been provided in the “How to Delete Your Account” FAQ187. While this assessment has been carried out by reference to the Privacy Policy and any linked texts/documents/notices, WhatsApp, as part of its Inquiry Submissions, made specific reference this FAQ in support of its approach under this heading. Accordingly, I have reviewed this document as part of my assessment. I note that this document states: “How to delete your account You can delete your account from within WhatsApp. Deleting your account is an irreversible process, which we cannot reverse even if you perform it by accident. … Deleting your account will: Delete your account info and profile photo. Delete you from all WhatsApp groups. Delete your WhatsApp message history on your phone and your iCloud backup. If you delete your account: You can't regain access to your account. It may take up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete your WhatsApp information. Copies of your information may also remain after the 90 days in the backup storage that we use to recover in the event of a disaster, software error, or other data loss event. Your information isn't available to you on WhatsApp during this time. It doesn't affect the information other users have relating to you, such as their copy of the messages you sent them. Copies of some materials such as log records may remain in our database but are disassociated from personal identifiers.
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Available at https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/28030012/ (the “”How to Delete Your Account” FAQ”)
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