Millions of WhatsApp Users Worldwide Locked Out Due During Account Review Glitch by Meta
Millions of WhatsApp users in India and several other countries were locked out of their accounts on Monday night after an apparent automated enforcement error triggered mandatory 24-hour security reviews.
The issue began around 8 pm IST on August 3, with affected users seeing an “Account in review” message instead of their chats. The notification informed users that their account activity and device information were being checked for compliance with WhatsApp’s Terms of Service and that a decision would typically be made within 24 hours. During the review period, users were unable to send or receive messages, access chat histories, create groups or use linked desktop sessions.
Unlike a conventional outage, the disruption restricted access at the account level rather than affecting the messaging service itself. The unexpected lockouts caused concern among individuals, freelancers and businesses that depend on WhatsApp for day-to-day communication.
Responding to reports of the issue, a WhatsApp spokesperson acknowledged that the company’s automated anti-abuse systems had incorrectly flagged some legitimate accounts. The spokesperson said WhatsApp continuously works to detect and ban accounts that misuse the platform but admitted that mistakes can occur and that the company is working to restore access as quickly as possible.
Meta has not disclosed how many users were affected or what caused the erroneous enforcement. However, industry observers believe an update to the platform’s automated spam detection system may have generated a large number of false positives, resulting in genuine users being placed under review.
WhatsApp routinely scans for activity that may violate its policies, including large-scale unsolicited messaging, the use of unofficial versions such as GB WhatsApp or WhatsApp Plus, and unauthorised automation tools. Analysts believe a backend detection error may have mistakenly identified regular accounts as suspicious during the latest enforcement cycle.
Users seeing the review message have been advised not to uninstall the application or rely on third-party services claiming to restore access. Instead, they should use the “Request Review” option, if available, submit their appeal through the official process and wait for WhatsApp’s verification to be completed.
The company said users’ chat histories and cloud backups remain safe and will become accessible again once the review process is completed. Engineers are continuing to restore affected accounts as the automated enforcement issue is resolved.
