If you gave up a SIM without moving your WhatsApp to a new number, that account may now be among those cut off. PTA officials say 176,000 WhatsApp accounts registered on recycled mobile numbers have been blocked at the regulator’s request.
The figures come from unnamed officials quoted in Pakistani press reports, not from a PTA press release or notice, and no Meta statement came with them. On the officials’ account, PTA has handed Meta about 10 million recycled numbers so the company can check which of them still carry WhatsApp accounts. Operators currently hold around 16 million such numbers, the officials said.
The two sides have also agreed on a standing arrangement, under which PTA will send Meta 5,000 recycled numbers every month, and accounts tied to them will be deactivated in phases. The reason given is fraud: when an operator reissues a cancelled number, a scammer or a stranger can end up with a number that an old WhatsApp account still points to.
The officials also said Meta resolved 82% of the fraud cases PTA referred to it last year. That is the only measure of the working relationship they offered, and no breakdown of those cases was given.
It is worth being clear about who does what here. PTA controls SIMs and the operators; only Meta can disable a WhatsApp account. So the accurate reading is that PTA supplies lists of numbers and Meta decides what happens to the accounts. It is the same issue behind the warning to move WhatsApp off inactive SIMs at the end of October, which also rested on unnamed officials.
For anyone with a dormant SIM, the practical step has not changed: change your number inside WhatsApp (Settings, Account, Change number) before the old SIM is cancelled, or confirm that the account is on a number you still use. Nothing has been said about how an affected user can appeal a block, and the reports do not say which accounts were hit.
