WhatsApp is deferring the rollout of its impending privacy rules in the midst of developing reaction from users over how their information will be imparted to parent company Facebook.
Users as of late have been escaping WhatsApp by the thousand over apprehensions that the app would suspend admittance to their records on the off chance that they didn’t consent to the new terms whose stating, some accepted, made it sound like their information would be going to Facebook.
The well known chat app with in excess of 2 billion users — gathered up in 2014 for $19 billion by Facebook manager Mark Zuckerberg — is presently moving the cutoff time for users to consent to the refreshed privacy policy from Feb. 8 to May 15 to give users more opportunity to comprehend the changes.
“We’ve gotten with such countless individuals how much disarray there is around our new update,” the company said in a blog entry. “There’s been a ton of deception causing concern and we need to assist everybody with understanding our standards and current realities.”
The privacy policy is being refreshed on the grounds that WhatsApp is adding an element to permit users to straightforwardly message businesses on its foundation. The new policy expects users to consent to those discussions being put away on Facebook workers, driving numerous users to imagine that Facebook would approach their private chats.
Since the app won’t work for users who don’t consent to its privacy terms, the conviction spread that Facebook was giving WhatsApp users a final proposal: surrender their information or get off the app.
“We will consistently secure your own discussions with start to finish encryption, so neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can see these private messages,” the company said in its Friday post. “We likewise can’t see your shared area and we don’t impart your contacts to Facebook.”
“This update doesn’t grow our capacity to impart information to Facebook”.
Lately, a large number of users have joined other scrambled informing administrations. More modest apps like Signal and Telegram saw their download numbers spike as fears developed, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeting “Utilize Signal” to his in excess of 40 million devotees.
Signal’s download numbers were multiple times higher on Sunday than they were on Jan. 6, the day WhatsApp declared its privacy change.
Telegram said that the disarray drove in excess of 25 million new users to join its administration in only 72 hours, pushing its client base over 500 million.
WhatsApp said that in the coming months it will “do significantly more to clear up the falsehood around how privacy and security chips away at WhatsApp”, and will approach users “continuously to survey the policy at their own speed.”