[watermelon0]

You should use a separate WhatsApp account for bot purposes.

Recently, I used a separate WhatsApp account to interact with a group chat that I have with my friends. After about a week, they disabled the account, with no way to re-enable it.

[miroljub]

Since WhatsApp accounts are bound to phone numbers, getting a new phone number is a significant hurdle in many legislations.

An easier solution is to just not use WhatsApp at all and look for the alternatives for bot purposes. Telegram explicitly encourages bot usage with no risk of bans.

[uxhacker]

And what ever happened to tools like jabber ? Or any other open source alternatives

[jannes]

Jabber/XMPP was designed around persistent TCP connections. Push notification support came too late.

[ButlerianJihad]

> in many legislations

Do you mean “jurisdictions”?

[miroljub]

I said "legislations" because the word describes the existence of laws, while "jurisdictions" describes the law enforcement.

There are still some European non-EU countries where you can get an anonymous phone number because laws are not fully enforced.

[grey-area]

This is incorrect usage in English I'm afraid, and jurisdictions covers areas with different laws, 'legislations' is not used in this context.

[ButlerianJihad]

Well, your usage is nonsensical in legal terms. Also, that is not the definition of “jurisdiction”.

Nobody who knows law would use “legislation” in that sense, nor would they recognize it in that context, Humpty Dumpty.

[BoppreH]

In my case I did, but it's still wasted time and money. And when breaking TOS there's always a chance of getting related accounts also banned, though I don't know if that has already happened with WhatsApp or not.