After four months in which the hostages were held captive by Hamas, their families received a message today (Wednesday) that their loved ones had "left" the WhatsApp groups they were members of. This was reported by Channel 14. The policy of Meta - the owner of WhatsApp - as advertised on their website: "WhatsApp accounts are generally deleted after 120 days of inactivity to maintain security, limit data retention, and protect user privacy." It was also noted: "Content that was stored locally on the device before the account was deleted will remain there until WhatsApp deletes it from the device. When the user registers the same device with WhatsApp again, the content that was stored locally will appear again." The deletion of the accounts resulted in many WhatsApp groups in which the hostages were members receiving a notification that they had left the group, even though they were not active on their account at all. As explained, this happens automatically. Gil Dikman, cousin of Carmel Gat, who was kidnapped on October 7 and is being held captive by Hamas, posted today on his Twitter account: "After 4 months in captivity, suddenly they are leaving the group - they will return. They must return. "This is an automatic WhatsApp mechanism, and it happened simultaneously on thousands of phones of families of the kidnapped and bereaved families from October 7.".
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