New Delhi, May 8: Facing criticism over its upcoming privacypolicy, WhatsApp has said that its users will not immediately lose theiraccounts or face curtailed functionalities on the platform on May 15, but theywill have to eventually go through limited functions if they fail to accept thenew norms in the due course of time.
The Facebook-owned messaging platform with more than twobillion users, with over 400 million users in India, warned that failing toaccept the new policy would result in users losing some functionalities after"persistent reminders".
"After giving everyone time to review, we're continuingto remind those who haven't had the chance to do so to review and accept. Aftera period of several weeks, the reminder people receive will eventually becomepersistent," WhatsApp said in an FAQ update.
After persistent reminders, the users will encounter limitedfunctionality on WhatsApp until they accept the updates.
This will not happen to all users at the same time.
"You won't be able to access your chat list, but youcan still answer incoming phone and video calls. If you have notificationsenabled, you can tap on them to read or respond to a message or call back amissed phone or video call," WhatsApp warned.
After a few weeks of limited functionality, you won't beable to receive incoming calls or notifications and WhatsApp will stop sendingmessages and calls to your phone.
WhatsApp, however, won't delete your account if you don'taccept the update.
"No one will have their accounts deleted or losefunctionality of WhatsApp on May 15 because of this update," the companyinformed.
For the last several weeks, WhatsApp has been displaying anotification to its users providing more information about the update.
Raising concerns over the changes to WhatsApp's privacypolicy, the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT had asked the messagingplatform to withdraw the recent change, along with several industry groups raisingthe question over the data sharing of WhatsApp users with Facebook.