It was reported yesterday that WhatsApp has scrapped its May 15 deadline for users to accept its controversial privacy policy update and said not accepting the terms will not lead to deletion of accounts on May 15. This came after WhatsApp faced severe backlash over user concerns that data was being shared with parent company Facebook. A WhatsApp spokesperson has said that no accounts will be deleted on May 15 for not accepting the policy update. However, in a clarification on its FAQs page later, the Facebook-owned messaging app said that those who do not accept the updated terms of service will get more persistent reminders after a period of several weeks and will also lose functionality after some time. The company said that at the time of receiving persistent reminders, users will encounter “limited functionality” on WhatsApp, which will also be lost if they don’t accept the updates till much later.
WhatsApp said that users will not be able to access their chat list, but will be able to receive incoming voice and video calls while getting persistent reminders from the company. Now, while the company itself says that users will “not lose functionality of WhatsApp on May 15,” it later goes on to say that after a few weeks of getting persistent reminders, users “won’t be able to receive incoming calls or notifications and WhatsApp will stop sending messages and calls to your phone.” This means that the instant messaging app will, indeed stop working if users don’t accept the updated terms of service – it just won’t happen on May 15. WhatsApp said that a majority of users have already accepted the update. “We’ve spent the last several months providing more information about our update to users around the world. In that time, the majority of people who have received it have accepted the update and WhatsApp continues to grow. However, for those that have not yet had a chance to do so, their accounts will not be deleted or lose functionality on May 15. We’ll continue to provide reminders to those users within WhatsApp in the weeks to come,” WhatsApp said in a statement.
WhatsApp has also updated its FAQs page in order to reflect the changes. WhatsApp said that users can also export their chat history on Android and iOS, and download a report of their account.
In January this year, WhatsApp had informed users about the changes in its terms of service and public policy through an in-app notification. Users were initially given time till February 8 to agree to the new terms in order to continue using the app, but after much backlash, the Facebook-owned messaging platform extended the deadline to May 15.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram.
Comments
0 comment