Protect user data and comply with privacy rules
Data privacy and security are essential when using WhatsApp for business communication. Businesses operating in regulated industries, such as finance, healthcare, and government, often have strict data residency and compliance requirements.
To support these needs, Meta provides enhanced storage controls to help businesses manage where and how their message data is stored.
Local storage for data at rest
Meta's Local storage feature allows businesses to control where their message data is stored after processing, ensuring compliance with strict data protection rules to meet the needs of regulated industries. Local storage helps businesses store sensitive data within specific regions or countries, supporting compliance with legal and corporate policies for data at rest.
The local storage feature applies to the following:
- Text messages: Message body content
- Media messages: Audio, images, documents, and videos
- Template messages: Text or media within the message
Data-in-use Time-to-Live (TTL)
To prevent sensitive data from persisting in temporary environments like caches or in-memory queries, WhatsApp enforces a Time-to-Live (TTL) of 60 minutes for data in use. After this period, message content is automatically deleted from these temporary stores, ensuring that no sensitive data remains accessible outside the selected country.
Availability of local storage
Local storage is available in the following regions and countries:
- Australia
- Bahrain
- Brazil
- Canada
- European Union
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Singapore
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Switzerland
- UAE
- United Kingdom
Once the local storage is enabled for a business phone number, Cloud API uses local storage in the selected country instead of its default storage in the United States. To learn more or activate the local storage feature, contact Support (opens in a new tab).