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Privacy at a Glance: Additional Information for Channels
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Note: Channel subscriptions are only available in certain countries and may not be available to you yet.
When you use WhatsApp Channels, we collect some limited information about you. We hope this guide, together with our main Privacy at a Glance guide, will help you to understand what information we collect, what we do with it, and how your privacy rights work.
How does channels work?
Channels is an optional, one-way broadcasting feature within WhatsApp, which allows ‘admins’ to create their own channel and share ‘channel content’ for others to view. Both followers and non-followers of a channel can view and react to channel content.
Learn how to create a WhatsApp channel, how to find and follow WhatsApp channels, and about privacy and safety on WhatsApp channels.
Channels are public, which means if you create a channel, others may be able to find, follow, and view your channel and see your channel content.
Some channels offer subscriptions, meaning you can support your favorite channels by paying a monthly subscription fee. When you subscribe to a channel, you can access channel updates only for subscribers. Learn more about channel subscriptions here.
Channels is separate from messaging on WhatsApp. Using Channels has no impact on the privacy of your personal WhatsApp messages, which continue to be end-to-end encrypted.
Information we collect
When you use WhatsApp, we collect information from you as described in Privacy at a Glance. If you choose to use channels, we collect some additional information from you. This could be:
- If you’re a channel admin:
- The name that you choose for your channel
- Other information that you choose to add to the channel, such as a picture, a channel description, or links to other websites
- Channel content that you share, such as text or audio content, videos, photos, images, documents, links, gifs, stickers, and polls
- If you’re a follower or a non-follower viewing channel content:
- Channels you follow
- Your reactions to channel content (for example, poll votes or emojis)
- Your language choices
- If you’re subscribed to a channel:
- Payment information related to your subscription, like your payment type and amount and time of payment.
- Subscription details, like when your subscription to a channel starts or when your monthly renewal is due.
- For all channels users:
- Your activity on channels, such as which channels and channel content you follow or view and your reactions to channel content
- Usage information, such as which channels features you use, your searches within the channels directory and the date, time, frequency, and duration of your channels activity
- Technical information relating to how well channels is working when you use it, such as crash data, performance logs, and error messages
- User reports made by others about your channel or specific channel content or user reactions
Sharing your information
Your information may be shared by you, or by us, with other people or organizations when you use Channels. For example:
- It’s important to remember that channel content shared by admins is public and can be seen by others. You should be careful about what information you share on channels. Anyone can take screenshots or make recordings of channel content and send them to other people or post them in other places online. Learn more about safety and privacy on Channels for admins.
- Admins, followers and viewers can share links with other people and invite them to follow or view a channel. If these links are shared on other Meta Company Products or on other services, Meta and those services will receive information about the channel, such as the name, description, picture, and number of followers.
- We work with other Meta Companies to help keep you safe when you use Channels. For example, this could be to help protect you against harmful conduct or to investigate possible violations of our policies or the law. We also share information with other Meta companies to help us provide Channels, as described in Privacy at a Glance.
- If you’re a channel subscriber, we work with other companies like Google, Apple, and other Meta Companies to help you pay for your subscriptions.
- When you’re a channel follower or non-follower viewing channel content, you’re not visible to other viewers or followers of that channel, and they can’t see how you interact with channel content. This means they can’t see your name, phone number, or profile picture.
- Admins may see your profile picture (if your privacy setting permits) and your profile name if you interact with their channel content. Admins can't see your full phone number unless they have you saved as a contact.
If you become an admin of a channel that has one or more admins, your phone number will be shared with the other admins. Learn more about safety and privacy on Channels.
What we do with your information
As described in Privacy at a Glance, we only use your information in line with legal requirements. This could be:
- To meet the terms of our contractual agreement with you
- Where you have consented to us using your information
- Where we believe we have a legitimate business reason that is not outweighed by any impact on your privacy rights
- To protect the key interests of you and other people, including physical and mental health, well-being, and safety
How we use your information will vary depending on how you use channels. For example, this may include:
- If you are a channel admin:
- Enabling you to create and manage your channels and to share and edit channel content. Learn how to edit channel content and how to delete channel content
- Providing you with access to information relating to your channel, such as the number of views of channel content, reactions to channel content, and your WhatsApp contacts following your channel
- If you are a follower or a non-follower viewering channel content:
- Enabling you to follow/unfollow, view, or mute/unmute a channel and to forward or react to channel content
- If you subscribe to channels:
- Processing your payments to pay for your channels subscriptions.
- Managing your channel subscriptions start and end dates and to renew your subscription.
- For all channels users:
- Creating and maintaining a directory of channels by category, so that you can search for channels that are of interest to you
- Showing channels to you based on your country or location and language preference
- Recommending channels that may be more relevant to you when you search or explore. Learn more About how WhatsApp recommends channels
- Understanding how users are interacting with channels
- Detecting, preventing and investigating suspicious activity, harmful behavior, and breaches of our terms and guidelines
Your privacy rights
You have certain rights when we use your information in connection with channels. You can find out more about these rights in
Privacy at a Glance.
You can also request a copy of your channels information or remove this information using the ‘Request channels report’ option under the ‘Request account info’ feature (in WhatsApp, go to Settings > Account).
Learn more about how to manage channel info and settings.
If admins delete a channel, this will:
- Remove the channel; and
- Remove all channel content from the admin’s WhatsApp account, which will no longer be accessible to other users
- Cancel all subscriptions to that channel
Learn more about how to delete a channel.
Note: If other users have copies of channel content on their device, or have forwarded the channel content to other people, these will not be deleted when a channel is deleted. It is important to remember this when sharing or posting channel content.
Thank you for using channels, we hope you’ve found this guide helpful.
You can find more details about your privacy rights and about how we use your information in our Teen Information Center, Privacy at a Glance and our Channels Supplemental Privacy Policy.
