Controversial new WhatsApp terms of service apply

Starting Saturday, the controversial new Terms of Service and Privacy Rules for WhatsApp will take effect. Those who do not accept the new policy at first will still be able to use the messaging service for the time being, but they will lose access to their conversations after a while.

WhatsApp announced new statuses early this year, but they immediately caused an uproar. Under the new rules, the messaging service is allowed to share data with its parent company, Facebook. WhatsApp itself assures that people’s privacy is not violated with this. “Your personal conversations remain safe with end-to-end encryption. This means that no one outside your chats can read or listen to your messages, not even WhatsApp or Facebook,” it seems.

The California company had already postponed implementing the new terms for the first three months, until May 15, due to the uproar over privacy rules. Those who will not accept the new terms will not be able to read and send the messages after that date.

The new rules will take effect on Saturday. WhatsApp has now announced that it will definitely not delete or deactivate accounts if people do not accept the new agreement. “In recent weeks, we have shown a notification in WhatsApp with more information about the update. After we give everyone enough time to go through the information, we continue to remind people to review the information and agree.”

However, after a few weeks of warnings and reminders, a gradual loss of important functions follows. Users will no longer be able to access their chat list, but they will still be able to answer incoming phone calls and video calls. Those who have turned on notifications can click on it to read it, reply to a message, or call back after a missed call. Those who still reject the new terms after those few weeks of limited jobs will no longer receive new calls, notifications or messages. The exact timing of excluding posts may vary from user to user according to WhatsApp.

Read more. Anyone who wants to continue using WhatsApp completely after May 15th must accept the new rules: What if you turn it down?