WhatsApp: What happens if you do not accept the app’s new terms of use before May 15?

WhatsApp: What happens if you do not accept the app’s new terms of use before May 15?

The key date is May 15.

WhatsApp set this Saturday as the deadline it is giving its millions of users to agree to new terms and conditions of use that caused a wave of criticism of the platform earlier this year.

With its new terms, the platform is asking its users (except those residing in the European region) to agree to share data with Facebook, the messaging service’s parent firm.

Starting this Friday, those who do not agree to the new update will begin to have limited service.

“No user’s account will be deleted or access to WhatsApp features removed on May 15 due to this update”, the platform says on its website.

How will all of this be applied? First no access to the chat list, then goodbye to calls and messages.

That they will not cancel the account is true, that you can continue to use WhatsApp as if nothing is no longer entirely true. In a support article on the WhatsApp website discovered by Bleeping Computer, they detail what will actually happen.

As WhatsApp states, users who do not accept the new privacy policy will receive frequent reminders to do so. Otherwise, they will begin to lose access to features of the service. WhatsApp says this will happen in two phases:

Phase 1: The user will not be able to access the chat list, but will still be able to answer calls or access chats from notifications when new messages arrive.

Phase 2: The user stops receiving calls or notifications, they will also stop allowing sending messages or making calls.

They indicate that despite everything the user will be able to export their data and the account will not be deleted by WhatsApp. They have not wanted to say when the user will enter each of these phases, although they explain that it will not be given equally to all users or at the same time. All this is reversible by simply accepting the new terms of use, of course.

WhatsApp’s new policy: what changes in its new privacy terms and who it affects.

In a nutshell, although WhatsApp will not cancel accounts to those who do not accept the privacy policy, it will leave the app practically unusable. All this chaos arises largely because Facebook said it would not use WhatsApp for Facebook’s benefit when it acquired the service, then we learned it was a lie. The big beneficiaries of all this? Signal and Telegram.