New June 19 deadline for these countries to accept WhatsApp’s privacy policy: Report

While the official deadline to accept the new policy passed for all users on May 15, users in these countries have reportedly been shown a new deadline to accept the company's new privacy policy.

WhatsApp (REUTERS)

WhatsApp, the world's most popular encrypted chat application surprised its users in January when it announced it was modifying its privacy policy to allow parent company Facebook to collect more data about how its users interact with businesses. While the new privacy policy went into effect around the world on May 15, the company has reportedly extended the update for some users.

According to a report from popular WhatsApp feature leaker WABetaInfo, the company's revised privacy policy has been pushed back to June 19 for users living in countries like Germany and Argentina. While the company hasn't officially provided a new date for any country to accept the new privacy policy, it is worth noting that Germany's highest data protection regulator has recently banned WhatsApp from sharing any user data with Facebook.

WABetaInfo also shared a screenshot of the ‘onboarding' screen used by WhatsApp to ask users to accept the new terms of service, which mentions a June 19 deadline for users to accept the terms of service – instead of the May 15 deadline for the rest of world, which has already passed.

In fact, it is this discriminatory treatment that the Indian government has been questioning the Facebook-owned messaging service about for a while now. The government has asked why Indian users have been forced to accept the policy while citizens in the European Union will not be forced to accept the terms.

The company is likely to face legal action after May 25, if the company does not send a satisfactory response to the government's notice asking it to withdraw the privacy policy forced on Indian users. Meanwhile, the company told the Delhi High Court last week that it was not going to push its deadline for accepting the new privacy policy, which means that users who have not accepted the privacy policy yet will steadily and eventually lose access to the service.