Although WhatsApp lacks a password for signing in to your account, it does, however, have a two-step verification to keep anyone from gaining access to your account if they steal your SIM card. Here’s how you’re able to reset that 6-digit PIN if you’ve forgotten it.
Note: You must first set up the two-step verification from your setting, it isn’t automatically enabled when you initialize your account.
Obviously, you’ll need to recover your PIN if you forget it. But another time you might need to recover your PIN is when you switch phones since WhatsApp requires you to enter your two-step verification PIN on your new device once you download the app. You can’t recover the same PIN you used, but you can get back into your account by resetting your PIN.
Recovering Your PIN
Go ahead and open up WhatsApp and when it asks for your PIN, tap the “Forgot PIN” link.
In the pop-up, tap the “Send Email” option. This sends a message to the email address WhatsApp has on record for you—the same one you used to set up your two-step verification.
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Note: If you chose to not enter an email upon setup, you will have to wait up to 7 days before you can set a new PIN through the application. Any messages you would have received in this time may be lost as messages older than 6-7 days are deleted. For that reason, if you didn’t set up an email for your account, it’s a good idea to do so—especially if you’re setting up two-factor authentication.
Next, tap the “OK” button.
You should receive an email shortly with a link to turn off your two-step verification. Tap the link and you’ll be redirected to your WhatsApp account in your browser.
Next, you’ll have to confirm that you want to turn off two-step verification.
That’s all there is to it. From here you’ll be able to log back into your app and start sending and receiving messages again.
Finally, because you turned off the extra security, don’t forget to set up two-step verification again, since your account isn’t fully secure until that’s re-enabled.
