PTA and Meta have blocked 176,000 WhatsApp accounts, but 6 million recycled numbers are not yet shared with Meta
PTA has given Meta 10 million of the 16 million recycled numbers held by operators, and will add 5,000 a month. At that pace the rest would take a century.
Pakistan has blocked 176,000 WhatsApp accounts because the phone numbers behind them were reissued to someone else. Officials of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said on 6 November that PTA has given Meta details of about 10 million recycled numbers to check, out of roughly 16 million that mobile operators hold. Under a permanent arrangement it will pass on 5,000 more each month, and linked accounts will be blocked in phases.
The blocks follow PTA's September warning that it would act on WhatsApp accounts tied to inactive or cancelled SIMs. What is new is the scale, and a standing monthly feed.
What the numbers show
Measured against the 10 million numbers Meta was given, 176,000 blocks is 1.76 percent. Measured against all 16 million recycled numbers, it is 1.1 percent. The officials did not say whether Meta has finished checking the 10 million, so both ratios are floors on how common the problem is, not a measured rate.
The same figures leave 6 million recycled numbers (16 million minus 10 million) not yet shared. The monthly feed is 60,000 numbers a year (5,000 times 12). At that rate, 6 million numbers would take 1,200 months, or 100 years. The magazine reads the feed as a way to cover numbers operators recycle from now on, not to clear the backlog. The monthly rate at which operators release numbers is unpublished, and that figure decides whether 5,000 is enough. If operators release far more than 5,000 a month, the unchecked stock will grow faster than the process clears it.
How a recycled number becomes a risk
WhatsApp ties an account to a phone number and proves ownership with a one time code sent by SMS or call. The code shows only that the person registering controls the number now. When an operator cancels a SIM and later reissues the number, nothing in that chain tells WhatsApp that a different person holds it. An old account can sit dormant, still carrying its contacts, group memberships and a profile name that people trust, until someone registers the number on a new device.
PTA's stated worry is fraud. Officials said these accounts had become a major source of cyber fraud, and that complaints had been received about their use. The exposure is a number carrying a social history that no longer matches its owner. That makes a scam message from it more believable to the old contacts, and puts the new subscriber in the way of messages meant for the previous one.
In September PTA told users who had changed numbers to use WhatsApp's Change Number feature and to confirm that their SIM is active and verified. That advice protects an owner who moves cleanly. It does nothing for a subscriber who simply stopped using a SIM, which is the case recycling creates.
Where the fix sits
A block at the platform end addresses the stock of risky numbers. The magazine's view is that the flow has to be addressed at the operator end: a longer holding period before a cancelled number is reissued would let old accounts lapse before a new holder arrives. PTA officials did not describe any new operator obligation, so the process as announced depends on Meta's checks alone.
Meta resolved 82 percent of the complaints PTA forwarded to it in the past year, officials said. That leaves 18 of every 100 unresolved. The total number of complaints was not given, so the 82 percent cannot be turned into a count of cases.
Who gains and who loses
Subscribers who inherited a number that was once someone else's gain the most, because stray messages and impersonation attempts should fall. Meta takes on a recurring workload and a measure of reputational risk, since every wrongly blocked account becomes a complaint it will receive. Fraudsters lose a ready made identity, an account with contacts and history that someone else built up. Operators face closer attention to their 16 million recycled numbers, though no obligation or penalty was announced for them.
PTA has not published a notice or data, and the figures come from its officials. The next test is the first monthly handover of 5,000 numbers, and whether PTA says how many of the 6 million still unshared have been passed to Meta.
