What Will Happen If You Don’t Accept WhatsApp’s New Terms and Conditions?

In just four days, WhatsApp’s new terms and privacy policy will be updated. Starting on May 15, the popular instant messaging app will change its privacy policy to gather more information about its users, including things like your IP address, and share that information with its parent company, Facebook.

A few weeks back, WhatsApp started displaying notifications in the app asking users to agree to these new terms and conditions. The company gave its users a few weeks to get to know the new privacy update and accept it. However, now that we’re just a few days away, it’s time for users to choose if they want to accept this policy or stop using the app.

Now, WhatsApp has shared what will happen to your account if you don’t accept the new update.

What Is WhatsApp’s New Privacy Policy?

In January of 2021, WhatsApp announced that it would update its privacy policy and share your info with Facebook and other Facebook companies.

WhatsApp’s new policy allows them to automatically collect and track more information than before, including your time zone, IP address, location, and even information about what type of device you’re using.

WhatsApp was initially going to implement this policy at the beginning of the year, but because of the huge backlash and mass confusion (which helped other instant messaging apps like Signal and Telegram gain millions of new users), the company decided to give users a few weeks to make a choice

It’s Their Way or the Highway

WhatsApp has already been notifying its users to accept the new privacy policy, but WhatsApp says that this notification will become “persistent” after May 15.

For the last several weeks we’ve displayed a notification in WhatsApp providing more information about the update. After giving everyone time to review, we’re continuing to remind those who haven’t had the chance to do so to review and accept. After a period of several weeks, the reminder people receive will eventually become persistent.

This basically means that you’ll have to accept the terms or eventually lose complete access to your account. More on that below.

If you still refuse to accept the new privacy policy, you’ll still be able to use WhatsApp, but you’ll have limitations. A lot of limitations.

In the first few weeks, you still be able to receive incoming phone or video calls. If you have missed calls, you’ll be able to call back as well.

You’ll also be able to reply to messages, but it won’t be that simple. You won’t be able to access your chat list. Instead, if you have notifications turned on, you can read your incoming messages and answer them, but you won’t see your pending messages or be able to start a new chat.

After “a few weeks” of having this limited functionality, if you still haven’t accepted the new terms and conditions, you won’t be able to receive incoming calls or notifications.

You won’t be able to reply to any messages or call your contacts back either – basically, rendering your whole account useless until you decide to accept WhatsApp’s new policy.

Keep in mind, though you have a limited time to make a choice. WhatsApp doesn’t say exactly how many weeks you have before this happens, but we can assume it won’t be many.

Your WhatsApp Account Won’t Get Deleted… Sort Of

WhatsApp explicitly says your account won’t be deleted because of the new terms and conditions. That said, they’d still have the power to delete your account if you become inactive.

Once you can’t access your account at all, WhatsApp’s existing policy says it’ll delete your account after 120 days of inactivity – meaning you’ll lose your account, your message history, and your backups will be automatically deleted as well.

Before all this happens, you can export your chat history and download it along with a report of your account.