Guide · Trust and safety · For the business that sends private information
When the person behind a customer's WhatsApp may have changed: Meta's identity change notice, and who should switch it on
A clinic sends results, a bank sends balances, a school sends a child's attendance, a landlord sends a tenant's statement. Each trusts that the WhatsApp number it is writing to still belongs to the person it checked months ago. Phones are lost, numbers are reassigned, accounts are taken over. Meta offers a quiet safeguard for exactly this: a notice when the identity behind a customer's WhatsApp account may have changed, with sending paused until the business says it is safe. Here is how it works and who should switch it on.
Published 1 October 2026
The problem Meta is solving
Meta's page starts from an honest premise. A business that wants to send private information over WhatsApp first has to establish that it is talking to the right person, and today that check happens off WhatsApp: a login, an ID at the counter, a signed form. Once that trust exists, the business has no way of knowing when the person holding the WhatsApp account changes. The chat looks the same; the hands on the phone may not be.
WhatsApp itself can notice something the business cannot: a potential change in the account's cryptographic identity, the keys that underpin its encryption, as explained in the privacy guide. Meta's feature turns that observation into a signal the business can act on.
What happens when the business opts in
- A notice arrives
- When WhatsApp detects a potential change of identity on a customer's account, the business's system is notified, and incoming messages from that customer carry the signal.
- Sending is paused
- Meta's page says all outgoing messages to that customer are blocked until the business acknowledges the notice. Nothing private can slip out to the new holder of the account by habit or automation.
- The business decides
- Meta's recommended order: break trust (for example, unlink WhatsApp as a trusted channel on the customer's record), re-check the person's identity off WhatsApp as you did the first time, and only then acknowledge the notice and resume. Meta is explicit that acknowledging does not by itself make the person trusted; it only lifts the pause.
Who should switch it on
What it means day to day
- Agree the re-check. A call to a number on file, a visit, a login to your portal, a one-time code sent another way. Meta leaves the method to the business; the point is that it is not another WhatsApp message to the same account.
- Let the system pause, not the person. The block is Meta's and applies to every message, including automated ones. The owner's system should show the pause plainly so that a reminder that silently fails is not mistaken for a delivery problem, which is a different matter covered in the failure reasons guide.
- Acknowledge only after the re-check, and record who did it and when, since the acknowledgement is the business taking responsibility for what follows.
Questions
Does this tell us the customer's phone was stolen?
No. Meta describes it as a potential change in the account's cryptographic identity, which also happens innocently when someone changes phone or reinstalls WhatsApp. It is a reason to re-check, not an accusation.
We send only delivery updates. Do we need it?
Probably not. The feature exists to stop private information reaching the wrong person. If nothing you send would matter in a stranger's hands, the pauses would cost you more than they protect.
Can the customer still write to us while sending is paused?
Yes. Meta's page says the business is informed on messages received from such users and is blocked from sending to them until it acknowledges. Their messages arrive; your replies wait.
If we acknowledge without re-checking, are we covered?
Meta says plainly that acknowledging the notice does not ensure the user is trusted. Establishing trust is the business's responsibility; the acknowledgement only lifts the pause.
Sources
- Meta's developer documentation: Identity change, read 1 October 2026.
More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.
Send private information over WhatsApp and want the safeguard on?
We set up a business's WhatsApp number on a proper system that opts in to Meta's identity change notice, shows a paused customer plainly on the screen, and records the re-check and the acknowledgement so the business can show it took care. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.
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