January 16, 2021 3 min read

This story originally appeared on Alto Nivel

Days ago WhatsApp announced to its users through an alert in its application that they had to accept the new terms of use , which implied that it was granted permission to share personal data – either phone number and location- with Facebook , but the above is not entirely clear, since this is linked to the chat with a company, that is, WhatsApp Business , which is the business application that had already been launched in 2018 , and not personal chats.

After the news, quite a few users panicked and started migrating to other messaging applications , such as Telegram and Signal , in order to protect their Facebook data.

Due to all the confusion, the famous instant messaging application WhatsApp made the decision to postpone the date of the implementation of its new policy, it reported in a statement on Friday.

In response to all the concerns and confusion, the company canceled the February 8 deadline for users to accept these rules, thus delaying it until May 15.

@WhatsApp via Twitter

“At this time, we postpone the date that users will be asked to review and accept the conditions. No account will be suspended or deleted on February 8. Additionally, we will take a number of steps to clear up misinformation regarding the way privacy and security work on WhatsApp . Then, we will gradually ask users to review the policy at their own pace before the new options for companies are enabled on May 15, ” WhatsApp mentioned through the statement from its official blog.

“ WhatsApp helped bring end-to-end encryption to users around the world, and we are committed to defending this security technology both today and in the future. We thank all the people who contacted us, as well as the many others who helped spread the facts and stop the rumors. We will continue to strive to make WhatsApp the best way to communicate privately, ”the app added.

In case you are interested: ‘Respect users’, the reason why many are changing WhatsApp for Telegram