WhatsApp Privacy Policy: Your Account Won’t Be Deleted After May 15, but Here’s What Will Happen if You Don’t Accept the New Terms

By admin On May 14, 2021

May 15, 2021—the day when the new WhatsApp privacy policy finally comes into effect. After facing much backlash from users across, the Facebook-owned app sure scrapped its May 15 deadline, but not quite literally. WhatsApp earlier noted that no accounts will be deleted on May 15, 2021, for not accepting the policy update, but there’s much more to what meets the eye. You will lose a whole lot of functionality at some point. Yes, you read that right. Users might start losing some basic features until they accept the new terms. Well, it appears to be worse than losing the account in the first place. So, what will happen? Let us look into the details.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp created a lot of buzz after its controversial privacy policy forced users to switch to other alternative apps such as Signal and Telegram. The lack of clarity about what it meant garnered a scathing response from users. From creating memes to troll the Facebook-owned app’s policy to rushing to other ‘more secured’ applications, we saw it all. After facing significant criticisms WhatsApp did ease up the process but appears to use a rather forceful method of making people accept the new privacy policy.

What Will Happen If You Don’t Accept WhatsApp’s New Terms?

Your account will not be deleted on May 15, unlike the previous controversial announcement. The messaging platform now clarified that users who do not accept the updated privacy policy will lose most of the key features. Users will get constant reminders with the screen asking to accept the policy. If not accepted, WhatsApp users will have limited functionality. “After a few weeks of limited functionality, you won’t be able to receive incoming calls or notifications and WhatsApp will stop sending messages and calls to your phone. At that point, users will have to choose: either they accept the new terms, or they are in effect prevented from using WhatsApp at all,” the company was quoted saying The Guardian in a statement.

WhatsApp Privacy Policy

From tomorrow, if you don’t respond to reminders from WhatsApp to accept its privacy policy, it will slowly start limiting features including your ability to receive calls and notifications. Then if you don’t use the app for 120 days, it will delete your account. pic.twitter.com/1vwzq4AY1D

— Sukhnidh ⚆ _ ⚆ (@skhndh) May 14, 2021

Till you accept it, first your access to the chat list within WhatsApp will be restricted, meaning you won’t be able to see messages. If you have WhatsApp notifications enabled on your phone, you will be able to see messages incoming messages in the notification itself and reply from there for the time being. You will be able to answer incoming WhatsApp voice and video calls, but then all of it will stop. As of now, there is no specific time mentioned for what the ‘few weeks’ would be. This means, eventually, all WhatsApp users will have to accept the new privacy policy to be able to use the platform.

WhatsApp in its defense, time and again, reiterated that there would be no change in their data sharing policy. The chats are encrypted, and hence, they could never be accessed by anyone else, not even WhatsApp, apart from the sender and the receiver.

(The above story first appeared on Today News 24 on May 14, 2021 03:21 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website todaynews24.top).