About blocking and reporting contacts
You can stop receiving WhatsApp messages, calls and status updates from certain contacts by blocking them. You can also report problematic content to us.
When you block someone:
- Your last seen, online, status updates, and any changes made to your profile photo will no longer be visible to contacts you've blocked.
- Messages, calls, and status updates sent by the contact won't show up on your phone and won’t be delivered to you.
- Blocking a contact won't remove them from your contacts list, nor will it remove you from the list on the contact's phone. To delete a contact, you must delete the contact from your phone's address book.
When you report someone:
- WhatsApp receives the last five messages sent to you by the reported user or group, and they won’t be notified. WhatsApp also receives the reported group or user ID, information on when the message was sent, and the type of message sent (image, video, text, etc.).
- You can also choose to report an account by long pressing a single message.
- We may ban accounts if we believe the account activity is in violation of our Terms of Service. Per our Terms of Service, we may retain the right to ban the user without notification.
- Please be aware that a user report of conduct in violation of our Terms of Service won't necessarily result in us banning the user or otherwise taking action against the user.
Blocked numbers will be visible in the Blocked section (iPhone and KaiOS) or Blocked contacts section (Android) of your WhatsApp settings. The only way to remove numbers from this list is to unblock them.
Note
- Blocking a contact won’t stop that user from seeing your messages in a group you both participate in, and you’ll see their messages in that group as well. Please don't participate in groups with people you don't wish to communicate with.
- If you're concerned whether a blocked contact will know if you're blocking them, please read this article.
Related resources: