By Fatiha Shabir
WhatsApp users who have not yet accepted the new privacy policy will lose some of the app’s functionality. The policy was updated on January 1, 2021 and users were given up until May 15, 2021 to read and understand the terms “at their own pace”.
Following the lapse of the grace period, the company will now constantly remind users to accept the terms through in-app alerts.
“After giving everyone time to review, we’re continuing to remind those who haven’t had the chance to do so to review and accept. After a period of several weeks, the reminder people receive will eventually become persistent,” said the company.
Users, who fail to accept the privacy policy, will gradually over time not be able to see chat lists and finally not be able to receive video calls and messages.
However, WhatsApp has revealed that no account will be deleted, unlike earlier mentioned.
As two billion users accepted the new policy, WhatsApp is striving to ensure everyone else who uses the app follows suit.
Privacy issues have been a matter of concern to the users, ever since the first policy arrived.
The company, however, had several times stated that the app respects user privacy and cannot see personal messages as they are end-to-end encrypted. This means they can be read on the devices of the sender and recipient only.
Edited by Sumaya Hussein