This page covers WhatsApp's Terms of Service across 7 scrapes spanning 2022-07-11 to 2025-10-23, with 11 unique snippets. WhatsApp_Other.jsonl and WhatsApp_Privacy_Policy.jsonl are both empty (0 lines) and have been skipped.
What this wiki found — complete, every page
Presence facts, not verdicts — each flagged term links to its definition and the exact clause on this page. Absence of a badge means the term isn't currently flagged here, not that the page is risk-free.
Independent reviews, where they had something to say
WhatsApp – Terms of Service
Dataset: PGAv2 (Platform Governance Archive v2) — 25 platforms, 2022–2026
PGAv2 (Platform Governance Archive v2) is this wiki’s legacy dataset: pre-tagged JSONL records covering 25 major social-media, messaging, and content-sharing platforms, with risk scores and keywords assigned via systematic extraction of 1,736 high-risk clauses from each platform’s Terms of Service, Privacy Policies, and Community Guidelines, spanning 2022–2026.
Note: This page contains documented policy clauses. Risk assessment is qualitative and context-dependent. For analysis of patterns across platforms, see:
Source: sources/jsonl/WhatsApp_Terms_of_Service.jsonl
Last updated: 2025-10-23
Overview
This page covers WhatsApp’s Terms of Service across 7 scrapes spanning 2022-07-11 to 2025-10-23, with 11 unique snippets. WhatsApp_Other.jsonl and WhatsApp_Privacy_Policy.jsonl are both empty (0 lines) and have been skipped.
WhatsApp’s “Your License To WhatsApp” clause grants WhatsApp “a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform” anything a user uploads or sends — but explicitly caps the purpose: “for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days).” The reciprocal “WhatsApp’s License To You” is conventional EULA boilerplate: “limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable.” A separate “Harm To WhatsApp Or Our Users” clause bans users from using “automated or other means” to access, reverse-engineer, or “create derivative works based upon” the Service itself, and separately bans “sell[ing], resell[ing], rent[ing], or charg[ing] for our Services or data obtained from us… in an unauthorized manner.” Both confirmed reworded dates (2023-07-21, 2025-07-03) turn out to be cosmetic only — a markdown link-rendering glitch and a Meta-branding domain migration (facebook.com → about.meta.com), respectively — with no change to the substance of any license clause.
Flagged Keywords & Risks
royalty-free,sublicensable,derivative works,create derivative,transferable— Tag the “Your License To WhatsApp” Content-license clause. Why it matters: the grant is broad in qualifier terms, but explicitly purpose-limited to operating the Services — narrower in framing than several other platforms’ “for any purpose” Content licenses tracked in this wiki.sublicense,prepare derivative,automated means— Tag the “Harm To WhatsApp Or Our Users” restriction: bans reverse-engineering, automated account creation, and creating derivative works “based upon” the Service itself. Why it matters: a conventional but unusually detailed anti-abuse list, explicitly banning unauthorized resale of “data obtained from us or our Services.”assignable— A “Changes to Our Terms” clause: WhatsApp’s rights/obligations are “freely assignable by us to any of our affiliates or in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets,” while “you will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under our Terms to anyone else without our prior written consent.” Why it matters: the conventional one-sided assignment asymmetry, explicitly naming M&A scenarios as a trigger.develop new features— Appears in a routine “we may need to update these Terms… to reflect our Services and practices correctly” sentence. Why it matters: despite sounding AI-adjacent, this snippet is about general product/Terms updates, not AI training — flagged here as a likely keyword/content mismatch rather than a genuine AI-development clause (this keyword does not yet have a dedicated concept page).
Legal Context & Research Significance
WhatsApp’s “Your License To WhatsApp” clause is notable among this wiki’s Content licenses for being explicitly purpose-limited (“for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services”) rather than open-ended — a narrower instance of wearetosed’s “rights & liability waivers” category than, for example, TruthSocial’s or Reddit’s “for any purpose” grants, even though the same broad qualifiers (royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable) are present. The “Harm To WhatsApp Or Our Users” clause’s ban on unauthorized resale of “data obtained from us or our Services,” paired with its anti-scraping ban on “automated or other means” of access, is consistent with the actual-notice enforcement theory Atkinson (2025) describes: a scraper accessing this page is on notice of the prohibition, which under Atkinson’s framework supports contractual enforceability independent of whether robots.txt is honored. The develop new features flag is a useful illustration of Javed and Sajid’s (2024) point that automated NLP/keyword-based privacy-policy analysis (used in 42.57% of the literature they reviewed) can produce false-positive matches — here, a routine Terms-update sentence superficially resembling AI-development language but referring to nothing of the sort.
Changes Summary
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| 2022-07-11 | Baseline version (first scrape in this dataset). |
| 2022-09-20 | No changes from previous version. |
| 2022-10-13 | No changes from previous version. |
| 2023-07-21 | Cosmetic-only, confirmed via diff: a markdown link-rendering glitch truncated a trademark-page URL to ”#”. No substantive change. |
| 2023-08-19 | No changes from previous version. |
| 2025-07-03 | Cosmetic-only, confirmed via diff: Meta-branding domain migration (facebook.com/facebookbrand.com → about.meta.com) across all clauses, plus “Last modified” relabeled “Effective Date”. No substantive change to any license clause. |
| 2025-10-23 | No changes from previous version. |
Version History
2022-07-11
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
Clause: royalty-free, sublicensable, derivative works, create derivative, transferable
We own all copyrights, trademarks, domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, and other intellectual property rights associated with our Services. You may not use our copyrights, trademarks (or any similar marks), domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, or other intellectual property rights unless you have our express permission and except in accordance with our Brand Guidelines. You may use the trademarks of our affiliate companies only with their permission, including as authorized in any published brand guidelines. Your License To WhatsApp. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant WhatsApp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver them). WhatsApp’s License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms.
Clause: sublicensable, transferable
Your License To WhatsApp. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant WhatsApp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver them). WhatsApp’s License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise, except for the licenses and rights expressly granted to you. ### Reporting Third-Party Copyright, Trademark, And Other Intellectual Property Infringement To report claims of third-party copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property infringement, please visit our Intellectual Property Policy. We may take action with respect to your account, including disabling or suspending your account, if you clearly, seriously or repeatedly infringe the intellectual property rights of others or where we are required to do so for legal reasons.
Clause: sublicense, derivative works, create derivative, prepare derivative, automated means
Legal And Acceptable Use. You must access and use our Services only for legal, authorized, and acceptable purposes. You will not use (or assist others in using) our Services in ways that: (a) violate, misappropriate, or infringe the rights of WhatsApp, our users, or others, including privacy, publicity, intellectual property, or other proprietary rights; (b) are illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, intimidating, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or instigate or encourage conduct that would be illegal or otherwise inappropriate, such as promoting violent crimes, endangering or exploiting children or others, or coordinating harm; (c) involve publishing falsehoods, misrepresentations, or misleading statements; (d) impersonate someone; (e) involve sending illegal or impermissible communications, such as bulk messaging, auto-messaging, auto-dialing, and the like; or (f) involve any non-personal use of our Services unless otherwise authorized by us. Harm To WhatsApp Or Our Users. You must not (or assist others to) directly, indirectly, through automated or other means access, use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sublicense, transfer, display, perform, or otherwise exploit our Services in impermissible or unauthorized manners, or in ways that burden, impair, or harm us, our Services, systems, our users, or others, including that you must not directly or through automated means: (a) reverse engineer, alter, modify, create derivative works from, decompile, or extract code from our Services; (b) send, store, or transmit viruses or other harmful computer code through or onto our Services; (c) gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to our Services or systems; (d) interfere with or disrupt the safety, security, confidentiality, integrity, availability or performance of our Services; (e) create accounts for our Services through unauthorized or automated means; (f) collect information of or about our users in any impermissible or unauthorized manner; (g) sell, resell, rent, or charge for our Services or data obtained from us or our Services in an unauthorized manner; (h) distribute or make our Services available over a network where they could be used by multiple devices at the same time, except as authorized through tools we have expressly provided via our Services; (i) create software or APIs that function substantially the same as our Services and offer them for use by third parties in an unauthorized manner; or (j) misuse any reporting channels, such as by submitting fraudulent or groundless reports or appeals. Keeping Your Account Secure. You are responsible for keeping your device and your WhatsApp account safe and secure, and you must notify us promptly of any unauthorized use or security breach of your account or our Services. ### Third-Party Services Our Services may allow you to access, use, or interact with third-party websites, apps, content, other products and services, and Facebook Company Products. For example, you may choose to use third-party data backup services (such as iCloud or Google Drive) that are integrated with our Services or interact with a share button on a third-party’s website that enables you to send information to your WhatsApp contacts.
Clause: assignable
We will also update the “Last modified” date at the top of our Terms. Changes to these Terms shall become effective no sooner than 30 days after we provide notice of planned changes. Once updated Terms come into effect, you will be bound by them if you continue to use our Services. We hope you will continue using our Services, but if you do not agree to our Terms, as amended, you must stop using our Services by deleting your account. * All of our rights and obligations under our Terms are freely assignable by us to any of our affiliates or in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets, or by operation of law or otherwise. In the event of such an assignment, we will only transfer your information in compliance with applicable laws, and ask for your consent where required; these Terms will continue to govern your relationship with such third-party. We hope you will continue using WhatsApp, but if you do not agree to such an assignment, you must stop using our Services by deleting your account after having been notified about the assignment. * You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under our Terms to anyone else without our prior written consent. * Nothing in our Terms will prevent us from complying with the law.
Clause: develop new features
- You will comply with all applicable United States and non-United States export control and trade sanctions laws (“Export Laws”). You will not, directly or indirectly, export, re-export, provide, or otherwise transfer our Services: (a) to any individual, entity, territory, or country prohibited by Export Laws; (b) to anyone on United States or non-United States government restricted parties lists; or (c) for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, including nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, or missile technology applications without the required government authorizations. You will not use or download our Services if you are located in a restricted country or territory, if you are currently listed on any United States or non-United States restricted parties list, or for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, and you will not disguise your location through IP proxying or other methods. * Any amendment to or waiver of our Terms proposed by you requires our express consent. * We are constantly working to improve our Services and develop new features to make our products even better for you and our community. Therefore, we may need to update these Terms from time to time to reflect our Services and practices correctly. We will only make changes if the provisions are no longer appropriate or incomplete. Unless otherwise required by law, we will provide you at least 30 days’ advance notice of changes to our Terms (e.g., by e-mail or through the Services), which will give you the opportunity to review the revised Terms before they become effective, and we will ensure that any such changes are reasonable for you, taking into consideration your interests. We will also update the “Last modified” date at the top of our Terms.
2022-09-20
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
All clauses unchanged from 2022-07-11 (see above).
2022-10-13
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
All clauses unchanged from 2022-09-20 (see above).
2023-07-21
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
sublicense, prepare derivative, assignable, develop new features, automated means unchanged from 2022-10-13.
Clause: royalty-free, sublicensable, derivative works, create derivative, transferable (cosmetic rewording only — link/domain formatting, confirmed via diff)
We own all copyrights, trademarks, domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, and other intellectual property rights associated with our Services. You may not use our copyrights, trademarks (or any similar marks), domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, or other intellectual property rights unless you have our express permission and except in accordance with our Brand Guidelines. You may use the trademarks of our affiliate companies only with their permission, including as authorized in any published brand guidelines. Your License To WhatsApp. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant WhatsApp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver them). WhatsApp’s License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms.
2023-08-19
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
royalty-free, sublicensable, derivative works, create derivative, transferable reverted to the 2022-10-13 wording (see above).
sublicense, prepare derivative, assignable, develop new features, automated means unchanged from 2023-07-21.
2025-07-03
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
Clause: royalty-free, sublicensable, derivative works, create derivative, transferable (cosmetic rewording only — link/domain formatting, confirmed via diff)
We own all copyrights, trademarks, domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, and other intellectual property rights associated with our Services. You may not use our copyrights, trademarks (or any similar marks), domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, or other intellectual property rights unless you have our express permission and except in accordance with our Brand Guidelines. You may use the trademarks of our affiliate companies only with their permission, including as authorized in any published brand guidelines. Your License To WhatsApp. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant WhatsApp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver them). WhatsApp’s License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms.
Clause: sublicensable, transferable (cosmetic rewording only — link/domain formatting, confirmed via diff)
Your License To WhatsApp. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant WhatsApp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver them). WhatsApp’s License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise, except for the licenses and rights expressly granted to you. ### Reporting Third-Party Copyright, Trademark, And Other Intellectual Property Infringement To report claims of third-party copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property infringement, please visit our Intellectual Property Policy. We may take action with respect to your account, including disabling or suspending your account, if you clearly, seriously or repeatedly infringe the intellectual property rights of others or where we are required to do so for legal reasons.
Clause: sublicense, derivative works, create derivative, prepare derivative, automated means (cosmetic rewording only — link/domain formatting, confirmed via diff)
You must access and use our Services only for legal, authorized, and acceptable purposes. You must not engage in activity that violates our Terms or other terms and policies that may apply to your use of our Services, including but not limited to the WhatsApp Channels Terms of Service, WhatsApp Messaging Guidelines, and the WhatsApp Channels Guidelines. Learn more about the restrictions we may impose on the use of WhatsApp, including information on how we apply our policies, procedures, measures and tools here. Harm To WhatsApp Or Our Users. You must not (or assist others to) directly, indirectly, through automated or other means access, use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sublicense, transfer, display, perform, or otherwise exploit our Services in impermissible or unauthorized manners, or in ways that burden, impair, or harm us, our Services, systems, our users, or others, including that you must not directly or through automated means: (a) reverse engineer, alter, modify, create derivative works from, decompile, or extract code from our Services; (b) send, store, or transmit viruses or other harmful computer code through or onto our Services; (c) gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to our Services or systems; (d) interfere with or disrupt the safety, security, confidentiality, integrity, availability or performance of our Services; (e) create accounts for our Services through unauthorized or automated means; (f) collect information of or about our users in any impermissible or unauthorized manner; (g) sell, resell, rent, or charge for our Services or data obtained from us or our Services in an unauthorized manner; (h) distribute or make our Services available over a network where they could be used by multiple devices at the same time, except as authorized through tools we have expressly provided via our Services; (i) create software or APIs that function substantially the same as our Services and offer them for use by third parties in an unauthorized manner; or (j) misuse any reporting channels, such as by submitting fraudulent or groundless reports or appeals. Keeping Your Account Secure. You are responsible for keeping your device and your WhatsApp account safe and secure, and you must notify us promptly of any unauthorized use or security breach of your account or our Services. ### Third-Party Services Our Services may allow you to access, use, or interact with third-party websites, apps, content, other products and services, and Meta Company Products. For example, you may choose to use third-party data backup services (such as iCloud or Google Drive) that are integrated with our Services or interact with a share button on a third-party’s website that enables you to send information to your WhatsApp contacts.
Clause: assignable (cosmetic rewording only — link/domain formatting, confirmed via diff)
We will also update the “Effective Date” at the top of our Terms. Changes to these Terms shall become effective no sooner than 30 days after we provide notice of planned changes. Once updated Terms come into effect, you will be bound by them if you continue to use our Services. We hope you will continue using our Services, but if you do not agree to our Terms, as amended, you must stop using our Services by deleting your account. * All of our rights and obligations under our Terms are freely assignable by us to any of our affiliates or in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets, or by operation of law or otherwise. In the event of such an assignment, we will only transfer your information in compliance with applicable laws, and ask for your consent where required; these Terms will continue to govern your relationship with such third-party. We hope you will continue using WhatsApp, but if you do not agree to such an assignment, you must stop using our Services by deleting your account after having been notified about the assignment. * You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under our Terms to anyone else without our prior written consent. * Nothing in our Terms will prevent us from complying with the law.
Clause: develop new features (cosmetic rewording only — link/domain formatting, confirmed via diff)
- You will comply with all applicable United States and non-United States export control and trade sanctions laws (“Export Laws”). You will not, directly or indirectly, export, re-export, provide, or otherwise transfer our Services: (a) to any individual, entity, territory, or country prohibited by Export Laws; (b) to anyone on United States or non-United States government restricted parties lists; or (c) for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, including nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, or missile technology applications without the required government authorizations. You will not use or download our Services if you are located in a restricted country or territory, if you are currently listed on any United States or non-United States restricted parties list, or for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, and you will not disguise your location through IP proxying or other methods. * Any amendment to or waiver of our Terms proposed by you requires our express consent. * We are constantly working to improve our Services and develop new features to make our products even better for you and our community. Therefore, we may need to update these Terms from time to time to reflect our Services and practices correctly. We will only make changes if the provisions are no longer appropriate or incomplete. Unless otherwise required by law, we will provide you at least 30 days’ advance notice of changes to our Terms (e.g., by e-mail or through the Services), which will give you the opportunity to review the revised Terms before they become effective, and we will ensure that any such changes are reasonable for you, taking into consideration your interests. We will also update the “Effective Date” at the top of our Terms.
2025-10-23
- Explicit AI clause: NO
- Non-explicit predatory: YES
- Flagged keywords:
royalty-free,sublicensable,sublicense,derivative works,create derivative,prepare derivative,transferable,assignable,develop new features,automated means
All clauses unchanged from 2025-07-03 (see above).