WhatsApp postpones the introduction of the new data protection rules after criticism and a churn of users by a good three months.
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So far, users should agree to the new conditions by February 8th if they wanted to continue using the chat service belonging to Facebook. Now the new data protection guideline will not apply until May 15, as WhatsApp announced on Friday.
According to WhatsApp, the changes are primarily about creating better ways to communicate with companies. The end-to-end encryption, with which chat content is only visible in clear text to the participating users, but not even to WhatsApp itself, will not be shaken. It is also not about extended data forwarding to Facebook. Outside the EU, WhatsApp user data has been sent to Facebook for advertising purposes or to improve products – albeit since 2016.
WhatsApp is the world’s most successful chat service with more than two billion users, followed by Facebook Messenger (1.3 billion). In the past few weeks, WhatsApp rivals such as Telegram, Signal or Threema have reported a strong increase – because users left WhatsApp after the announcement of the new data protection directive. WhatsApp complained about the spread of false information about it, which they want to clear up by mid-May.
The Facebook share gains in NASDAQ trading at times 2.28 percent to 251.24 US dollars.
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MENLO PARK (dpa-AFX)
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