Cookies

Effective February 25, 2026 (archived versions)

Cookies and other technologies are used to store and receive information (including identifiers) on or from computers, mobile phones and other devices. In this policy, we refer to cookies and these other technologies as “cookies”.

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This policy explains how we use cookies and the choices you have, when you use our web-based Services, our website or our optional features on our Services such as Status and Channels. The Privacy Policy and any supplemental policy which is relevant to your use of our Services applies to our processing of the information we collect through cookies.

We use cookies to understand, secure, operate, personalise and provide our Services. For example:

• Site features and services. We use cookies to provide WhatsApp for web and desktop and other Services that are web-based. For example, we use the wa_lang_pref cookie to remember your choices, such as your language preferences on the website.
• Analytics. We use cookies to understand how our website is being used in order to rank the FAQs on our website based on popularity, understand mobile versus desktop users of our web-based Services, or understand popularity and effectiveness of certain of our web pages. For example, we use the wa_ul cookie to count visitors to FAQs so we can rank the FAQs based on popularity.
• Security. We use cookies to protect the WhatsApp website. For example, we use the wa_csrf cookie to prevent attacks from bad actors.
• Advertising. We use cookies when you use Status and Channels, which are optional, to help show you ads and measure how they perform. For example, we use a unique user identifier that allows us to display the ad correctly to users.

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You can follow the instructions provided by your browser or device (usually located under "Settings" or "Preferences") to modify your cookie settings.

Your browser or device may offer settings that allow you to choose whether browser cookies are set and to delete them. These controls vary by browser, and manufacturers may change both the settings they make available and how they work at any time. Additional information about the controls offered by popular browsers can be found at the links below. Certain parts of WhatsApp Products may not work properly if you have disabled browser cookies.

• Google Chrome
• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Safari
• Safari Mobile
• Opera

You can make choices about the information used to show you ads in your Ads preferences.

The https://www.whatsapp.com website exclusively uses First-Party cookies.

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