WhatsApp, on Friday, announced that it has pushed back the date its new privacy policy will take off.
The new privacy regime, which was supposed to kick-off on the 8th of February, has now been pushed back three months.
Following widespread confusion, protest and concern from users about the new privacy policy, Facebook inc. said it would delay the new policy launch to May, from February.
In a blog post on Friday, WhatsApp announced the delayed implementation of the privacy update:
“We’ve heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There’s been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts.”
WhatsApp users received a notification this month that it was preparing a new privacy policy and terms, and it reserved the right to share some user data with the Facebook app.
This sparked global outcries, leading many users to shut down their WhatsApp accounts, and migrate to competitions like Telegram and Signal.
WhatsApp, in earlier statements, explained that the update was focused on allowing users to communicate with businesses, and that the update does not affect personal conversations.
The company added that conversation would continue to have end-to-end encryption.
“This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook,” WhatsApp said in a statement.
“While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it’s important people are aware of these services,” it said.
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WhatsApp’s new privacy policy says the user information it collects may be shared with other Facebook companies “to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings.”
It is, however, worthy to note that WhatsApp already share certain categories of personal data, including the user’s phone number and IP address, with Facebook.
“We don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling. We also can’t see your shared location and we don’t share your contacts with Facebook,” it said.
WhatsApp said at the time that chats with a business using the new hosting service would not be protected by the app’s end-to-end encryption.