At the beginning of 2021 WhatsApp faced major criticism following its announcement of updating its privacy policy, an updated which alluded to the imposing of a compulsory sharing of its users data, with its parent company; Facebook.
The update essentially told WhatsApp users that if they wished to continuing using the social media platform, they must accept the new terms. Failure to accept the updated terms, would lead to them losing their WhatsApp accounts.
As a result of the major backlash, concerns and criticisms the company received following the news (the company also lost a significant number of users to its rivals; Telegram and Signal), WhatsApp decided to postpone its implementation of the new privacy policy, to the 15th of May 2021.
The social media giant has since made moves to try and educate and possibly win over its users to the side of supporting the changes in its privacy policy.
WhatsApp has further explained what will happens to users’ accounts if they refuse to accept the updated privacy policy on or before the 15th of May 2021 deadline.
If after the 15th of May 2021 you have not accepted WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, you will lose some vital functionalities on the social media app. A recent Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page listed by WhatsApp as “What Happens On The Effective Date” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/
The ‘Short Time’ WhatsApp referred to in its FAQ page, means that you will only be able to receive notifications and calls for a couple of weeks. This is according to an article by TechCrunch.
According to reports, the social media giant has begun to send out a communique to its merchant partners regarding the changes to its privacy policy. These merchant partners are basically the business accounts that use WhatsApp for their commerce transactions and in exchange, pay a fee to the company.
Interested WhatsApp users are left with two (2) choices:
- Download your entire chat history. Once done, you can proceed to delete your WhatsApp account.
- The other alternative is to yield and accept WhatsApp’s updated policy policy.
According to WhatsApp, all users will still be able to accept the updated privacy policy even after the 15th of May 2021 Deadline and continue to get access to the social media platform’s full functionality.
For users who do not accept the updated privacy policy when the deadline reaches, their WhatsApp accounts will be grouped as inactive. All inactive on the social media platform, are automatically deleted after a period of 120 days.
WhatsApp on its official FAQ page titled “About Inactive Account Deletion” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/
In a nutshell users who do not accept the updated privacy policy by the 15th of May 2021 deadline date, have 120 days to accept or continue to reject the privacy policy.
In addition, every day after the 15th of May 2021 users who have not accepted the updated privacy policy will be unable to read as well as send messages on WhatsApp.
As stated earlier, users can alternatively choose to download their chat histories and subsequently leave the WhatsApp platform. Keep in mind that if you choose to do so that is; leave the WhatsApp platform, all backups and chat histories will be permanently deleted.
You will also be removed from all WhatsApp groups that you are a part of. According to WhatsApp, “It is something we cannot reverse.”
Telegram offers the option of moving WhatsApp data to its own platform so if you are looking for a viable alternative, that is one. With this option, you can migrate your WhatsApp chats including all documents and media from both group chats and personal chats on WhatsApp, directly to Telegram.
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