Millions of people flock to Signal and Telegram as WhatsApp scrambles to assuage users’ concerns
A little more than a week after announcing changes to its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, WhatsApp is now postponing the enforcement of its new data sharing rules until May 15th.
“We’re now moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms. No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8. We’re also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp” reads the company’s blogpost.
We will make sure users have plenty of time to review and understand the terms. Rest assured we never planned to delete any accounts based on this and will not do so in the future.
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) January 15, 2021
For starters, however, the company is scrambling to address the key concern surrounding the new practices: “This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook”.
Indeed, the original announcement was met with a backlash, especially due to some unfortunate phrasing that raised questions among users about what kinds of data would be shared with the chat app’s parent company, Facebook.
This also led WhatsApp to whatsapp delays privacy policy update after confusion backlash
