Changes to this privacy policy suggest that WhatsApp will transfer some user data to parent company Facebook. This caused a negative reaction from users around the world, some of whom started looking for an alternative to the popular messenger. This has led to significant growth in the user audience of some of WhatsApp’s competitors, such as Signal and Telegram, over the past few days.

The developers insist that user frustration is caused by the confusion that arose after the new privacy rules were published. The company also noted the emergence of a large amount of misinformation related to these changes.

As a result, it was decided to postpone the effective date of the new privacy rules. The developers intend to use this time to focus on informing users about new changes in the service policy, as well as how to ensure privacy in chats and the processing of other user data.

The source notes that the new rules affect only business chats and do not affect the personal conversations of users. This means that the data of the chats where users communicate with representatives of any companies can be stored on Facebook servers. At the same time, the developers note that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook has access to user messages, photos, videos or other files transmitted in the process of communication since end-to-end encryption is used to protect against such abuse.

As for the new privacy rules, they will still come into force on May 15. Until that time, messenger users who refused to accept the new rules will not be blocked. However, the service will not completely abandon the changes, and the developers will have to try to convey to users the essence of the new privacy policy.