WhatsApp error 368: temporarily blocked for policy violations

Disclaimer: Error 368's exact triggers and durations are not fully documented by Meta and evolve with their trust and safety systems. Treat the guidance below as practitioner-tested but not officially confirmed.

What 368 actually means

Error 368 is Meta's way of saying: "We're pausing your ability to send messages from this number because something you did looks like a policy violation or spam pattern." The message never reaches the user, and every subsequent send from that number returns 368 until the block lifts.

Unlike 131031 (which locks the whole WABA), 368 usually targets a single phone number. It is Meta's most common warning shot to a business messaging at scale.

What triggers 368

Meta's Trust & Safety systems monitor several signals in near real time. Any one of these can trigger 368:

• Sudden send-volume spikes. Going from 5,000 messages a day to 200,000 in a single burst — even inside your messaging tier — looks like a compromised account.
• High block and report rates. If more than a small percentage of recent recipients block or report your number, Meta pauses to protect users.
• Quality rating collapse. Green → Yellow → Red on quality rating usually precedes 368 by hours or days.
• Template content flagged during send. Templates that Meta's live models re-classify as spam mid-campaign can trigger 368 even after approval.
• Sending patterns typical of spam. Identical messages to hundreds of numbers within seconds, or heavy use of shortened URLs to unknown domains.
• Unrecognised opt-in signals. A large percentage of recipients treating your number as unknown ("Report" is one tap on the WhatsApp UI).

How 368 differs from other blocks

Code	Scope	Duration	Reversible?
368	Number	1 hour to 7 days	Auto-lifts
131031	Number or WABA	Until appeal accepted	Requires appeal
131049	Per-recipient	~24-72 hours	Auto-lifts
131026	Per-recipient	Permanent per contact	Not reversible

The first hour after a 368

1. Stop the current campaign immediately. Every additional attempted send while blocked signals worsening behaviour to Meta.
2. Pull the last 6 hours of send logs. Look for volume spikes, unusually high 131049 or 131026 rates, and templates with above-average block rates.
3. Check quality rating on the phone number. Business Manager → WhatsApp Accounts → your number → Quality rating. Yellow or Red confirms the block is quality-driven.
4. Freeze all marketing sends on that number for 24 hours. Route only high-value transactional traffic (OTPs, order confirmations) once the block lifts.
5. Notify your BSP. They may have signal from other customers about broader Meta enforcement patterns that day.

Fixing the underlying cause

Drop frequency and volume by half

For the two weeks after a 368, halve your marketing send volume and cut broadcast frequency from (e.g.) 4x/week to 2x/week. Meta's systems recalibrate on recent behaviour.

Clean the list aggressively

Remove every contact with no engagement in the last 90 days. Remove every contact whose opt-in source you can't verify. Remove every contact who ever bounced with 131026 or 131049. Your list will shrink; your quality signals will improve.

Rotate templates to test which ones drew heat

If you have three active marketing templates, pause the highest-frequency one first. Send the remaining two at reduced volume for a week and compare block/report signals via quality rating movement.

Add clear opt-out language to every marketing template

"Reply STOP to unsubscribe" at the end of every marketing message reduces report rates significantly. Users who can easily opt out don't report; users who feel trapped do.

Raise your content quality bar

Meta's live models weight signals like: unclear sender identity, sensationalist urgency, mismatched URLs (link text says one thing, URL goes elsewhere), all-caps subject lines, and financial promises. Audit templates for all of these.

Patterns that repeat 368

Businesses that get one 368 usually recover. Businesses that get repeated 368s share these patterns:

• They ignore quality rating between blocks.
• They keep sending marketing to purchased or old lists.
• They send more than 3-4 marketing broadcasts per week to the same audience.
• They never rewrite templates that customers repeatedly report.
• They treat 368 as bad luck rather than a signal.

Each repeat 368 lasts longer than the last, until Meta escalates to 131031 or a permanent ban.

Preventive monitoring that catches 368 before it fires

1. Alert on any quality rating change (Green → Yellow, Yellow → Red).
2. Alert when the 24-hour rolling 131049 rate exceeds 8%.
3. Alert when the 24-hour rolling 131026 rate exceeds 8%.
4. Alert when marketing send volume exceeds 70% of daily tier for two consecutive days.
5. Alert on any template-level pause or disable event.

Any single alert on a Friday should stop your Monday campaign until investigated.

What 368 is not

• Not a permanent ban.
• Not a template-approval problem.
• Not a registration problem.
• Not a rate limit response (rate limits return HTTP 429 and error 130429).

If you see 368 alongside 131031 or template pause notifications, the account is heading toward a full restriction. Treat it as an emergency.

How ChatShree prevents 368 in production

ChatShree runs continuous quality-signal monitoring on every connected number, throttles marketing bursts to stay under 70% of daily tier, and pages our on-call the moment quality rating changes. Broadcast previews warn on templates with above-average recent block rates before you press send. See our automation module and the 131031 playbook for the full compliance stack.

Closing thoughts

Error 368 is Meta being polite. It's a pause, not a ban — and it's a chance to fix the underlying pattern before enforcement escalates. Businesses that respond to 368 with panic and workarounds get progressively worse outcomes. Businesses that respond with restraint, list cleanup and template audits typically go a full year without seeing it again. Which pattern you fall into is entirely your choice, and Meta is watching.