How to avoid being blocked on WhatsApp for a group name change prank
It happened almost a month ago: a heavy joke between members of a WhatsApp group led to their final expulsion and permanent ban from their accounts in the instant messaging application. One of the members of the affected group, in which the accounts of 250 people could be involved, had the 'great' idea of changing the name of the group to 'child porn', referring to child pornography. Almost automatically, the group was eliminated and all its members lost account because of the 'joke' in question.
No fucking grace about changing the name of the WhatsApp group to "child porn", let's see if @WhatsApp pays attention and they return the accounts to us. ??♀️
- Almu✨ (@almu_nh) October 11, 2019
The privacy, security and good behavior policies that affected Facebook have also been transferred to WhatsApp, since both applications belong to the same emporium. And in one of the points they clearly specify that improper behaviors that affect the security or privacy of users or that are suspicious of illegal activities will be punished with a ban from account. However, there is a way to try to alleviate the fact that anyone can edit the name of a group, limiting this action to the administrators of the group. Of course, administrators will be able to continue placing suspicious activity names in the group header, but at least these actions will be quite limited.
To prevent that any user of a group can edit and change the name of the group, if we are the administrators we will perform the following Steps:
Open the WhatsApp application and enter the group that you moderate. Remember that this trick can only be applied to the groups of which you are the moderator. If you belong to a group as a member only, this action must be performed by the administrator so if you fear for yourself, we recommend that you give this information to him to carry out.
Click on the name of the group in the header of the group. A new group configuration screen will open in which we can change the name, add a description, silence notifications, customize them or prevent the multimedia files that are shared in it from being seen in the gallery of your phone... Click on ' Group Settings'.
On the next screen two different options will appear. In the first, 'Edit info. of the group', we are going to press, opening a new screen, this time smaller. In it, we will have to choose the option ‘Only administrators‘. In this way, only group administrators will be able to change the name of the group, as well as its description. In the other option, we can also select that only administrators can send messages in the group. This is a very interesting option if it is a formal WhatsApp in which the administrators simply send notes or news to the rest of the participants.
If you have been affected by a WhatsApp ban, you must appeal the decision on this page, where you will find a form in this regard. Other reasons why WhatsApp can ban you the account, in addition to giving dubious names to the groups, are the following:
- Continuous user reports because you send unwanted messages, which can be understood as a form of harassment
- The massive sending of messages that are considered spam may result in a temporary ban although not definitive
- Share 'fake news' or messages that incite hate
- Aggressive, threatening or intimidating behavior
- If an inconsistency is detected between the IP address of the connection and the user's phone number
