However, due to public condemnation and legal problems, the company decided to postpone the adoption of the new policy from February 18 to May 15. However, in India, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a statement stating that “unilateral changes adopted by WhatsApp are unfair and unacceptable. ” The Indian government also recalled that South Asian countries have the largest number of messenger users in the world, and the new privacy policy is of serious concern to them. Also, in their opinion, the new data processing rules do not properly respect the rights and freedoms of Indian citizens.

The day before the release of this public letter, the Delhi Supreme Court ruled that using WhatsApp is voluntary, and those users who are not satisfied with the rules of the service can simply delete the application.

Earlier, WhatsApp and Facebook published a clarification stating that the new changes will only affect business chats (which are used for commercial mailing), but not personal communications of users. At the same time, the developers note that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook has access to user messages, photos, videos, or other files, and all information is encrypted.