WhatsApp Privacy Policy May be Made Optional, But You’ll Have to Accept if You Want to Do This

The WhatsApp privacy policy has become a major point of contention for the Facebook owned service. After facing massive backlash, the company was forced to extend the deadlines for its controversial privacy policy. While it initially stood firm that not accepting its new policy was not an option, and users would see their chat accounts being restricted or shadow banned if they didn’t comply with the new policy, the service appears set to take a complete back seat on the policy. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp may soon allow users to circumvent it.

According to the WABetaInfo report, the WhatsApp privacy policy will soon show up as a pop-up banner yet again for users. Once this surfaces, users can now seemingly tap reject on it to officially not accept the policy. Doing so, the report claims, will not reduce functionality of WhatsApp profiles, therefore giving users an actual recourse to the policy. However, this will come with one catch – WhatsApp accounts will remain functional only if a user who rejects it uses the service to talk to personal users only. If they decide to talk to any businesses through WhatsApp, they will be prompted to accept the policy again.

The controversial WhatsApp privacy policy detailed the company’s user metadata collection and sharing identifiers with businesses, in what has been largely viewed as the company’s global ploy to monetise WhatsApp and pitch it as a lucrative intermediary platform for businesses. However, the company faced widespread backlash for its data collection and harvesting practices, which privacy advocates around the world called out as a move that considerably violates the sanctity of users who use WhatsApp in hope of it being secure.

In response, WhatsApp ran multiple campaigns using its end to end encryption feature as an answer to its policy concerns. However, after all this time, it now finally appears to have accepted defeat and taken a step back, finally allowing users to reject the updated privacy policy – if that is what they aim to do.

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