Reading WhatsApp messages blocked if conditions are not accepted on May 15

Users who have not accepted WhatsApp’s new terms and conditions on May 15 will not be able to read or send new messages from that day. That’s what the company says. However, they can still read notifications and place calls for a few weeks.

From then on, the policy for inactive accounts will apply, WhatsApp says. That means that from then on, users have four months before WhatsApp deletes their account. If they decide to accept the terms and conditions after May 15, they will be able to access their messages again and use the service as normal.

If users have not yet accepted the terms and conditions by May 15, they will only be able to see notifications and place calls, but they will no longer be able to read and send messages. From then on, they have a few weeks to accept the terms before the service stops working altogether, Techcrunch writes.

WhatsApp explains the new policy after the decision at the end of last week to implement the new conditions containing an obligation to share data as of May 15. The change should have come into effect this month, but after the fuss about the new terms, the Facebook subsidiary postponed the new terms for a few months.

Within the EU, Facebook is not allowed to use data from European WhatsApp users, which means that virtually nothing changes to the terms of use for European users.