When archiving WhatsApp communications with the WhatsApp Archiver, you may encounter a strange message sender name/address originator: “0@archive.telemessage.com”.
Example :- telemessage_97fae7ee-1a4c-4c48-945d-0e78fad44ce7_2022111530
________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 (GMT)
From: 0@archive.telemessage.com
To: John Smith 5412994609964 john.smith@customer.com
________________________________________________________________
The most common source of this variance is WhatsAppsystem events or self-promotions of features. These are rate messages that WhatsApp sometimes sends to it’s users and highlight capabilities in the platform (like this demonstration ). These messages are recognizable by their date stamp: Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 (GMT)
The other causes of the “0” originator is running WhatsApp on numbers that were previously used by other users that held the same mobile number, but then deleted their account can generate this case. (In some of these cases, the WhatsApp encryption keys cannot be exchanged and a placeholder proxy is substituted for the unavailable originator).
An illustrative scenario that might cause such messages is as follows:
- Assume that a user registered on WhatsApp with a mobile number, or an Enterprise Number, that had an existing Meta/WhatsApp account before it was allocated to this new employee.
- When the new user logs in, Meta/WhatsApp will send him old messages waiting for the WhatsApp user that was installed on the existing account.
- The reason we are seeing that the message is from “0@archive.telemessage.com” is usually because the original sending party is not online thus some encryptions keys are not exchanged.
- To clarify, it means that the other party on WhatsApp deleted his account using the following steps:
- Activate WhatsApp with the new Enterprise number.
- Go to Setting > Account > Delete My Account.
- Enter your enterprise number and press Delete My Account
- WhatsApp will ask for a reason. You can ignore it and click Next. (Android has it a bit different. Then account will be deleted and you will be logged out to signup screen)
- Presented below, you can see the flow below with a demo phone that explains the creation of such an incident, detailing the messages seen in the archive (ascending time sequence).
