In the wake of the GDPR, a great many Internet services had to offer their users the possibility to view the data collected about you. WhatsApp is also affected by this.
you can view and download the information stored about you on WhatsApp at any time. In this post, I explain how you can do this.
Data: the gold of the digital age
It is almost impossible to move on the Internet without data being collected. Be it just the IP address of the device with which you access the Internet, to your preferences and Internet searches. Especially Facebook listens in on almost every internet page.
Although Facebook, to which WhatsApp also belongs, earns money with this data, it must offer you as a user the possibility to view and download the collected data. You can determine to a certain extent which data is collected about you, but even with very restrictive settings, a large data set is generated about you.
How to Request and download WhatsApp data
As mentioned at the beginning, there must be a way how you can view this data. You can easily request the data that WhatsApp stores about you. This is not that difficult:
- Open WhatsApp
- Go to the “Settings“
- Now tap on “Request account info“
- Depending on how much data you have saved, it may take a while until you see the button “Download report“.
- Now you have to export the report, because you can’t see it inside WhatsApp.
- In the following dialog choose the app you want to export the report to. You can also simply have it sent to you by email.
Once you have exported the report, you can delete it from the device. No data will be lost. Just tap on “Delete report“.