WhatsApp had recently announced a new privacy policy to clarify how the company collects and uses data when a user messages a business. However, because of WhatsApp’s failure to properly educate users on the changes, implications of data sharing with Facebook, a healthy dose of skepticism, and social media being social media, millions of users were up in arms about the changes, with many fleeing to alternative apps like Telegram and Signal. And now as it turns out, WhatsApp has decided to scrap the May 15 deadline for its controversial privacy policy.
According to a tweet from the Press Trust of India, WhatsApp has scrapped the May 15 deadline for accepting its privacy policy. The report further states that no accounts will be deleted if the new terms are not accepted by users, which is a complete U-turn from its stance before.
WhatsApp scraps May 15 deadline for accepting privacy policy, says no accounts will be deleted if terms not accepted by users
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) May 7, 2021
In a statement, WhatsApp said the following:
“While the majority of users who have received the new terms of service have accepted them, we appreciate some people haven’t had the chance to do so yet. No accounts will be deleted on May 15 because of this update and no one will lose the functionality of WhatsApp either. We will follow up with reminders to people over the next several weeks.”
At the time of the first announcement, users had to accept this new privacy policy that opened the way for deeper Facebook integration before February 8, failing which they would not be allowed to use the messaging service. The deadline was then pushed forward to May 15 after public backlash, and now it seems that the deadline and related coercive action has been dropped entirely. The Indian government had also recently asked WhatsApp to roll back its controversial policy. But from what we can interpret, the policy is not rolled back and will remain in place for users who have already accepted, and there appears to be no clear way to reject the policy once accepted. There is no clear information available yet whether this applies only to Indian users, or is applicable globally.
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source https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-scraps-may-15-deadline-privacy-policy/