WhatsApp is postponing the introduction of the new data protection rules after criticism and a churn of users by a good three months. So far you should agree to the new conditions by February 8th if you wanted to continue using the chat service belonging to Facebook. Now the new data protection guideline should only be dated 15. May apply as WhatsApp announced on Friday.

Better communication with companies According to a WhatsApp blog post, the changes are primarily about creating better ways to communicate with companies. The so-called end-to-end encryption, with which chat content is only visible to the participating users, but not even to WhatsApp itself in plain text, will not be shaken. There are also no plans to forward data to Facebook. Outside the EU, some WhatsApp user data flows to Facebook for advertising purposes or to improve products – however, since the year 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 had reported a strong increase – because users left WhatsApp after the announcement of the new data protection policy. WhatsApp complained about the spread of false information about the changes, which they want to clear up by mid-May. However, there was no question of taking back something from the planned changes and the data transfer.

The goal is to make money The fact that WhatsApp should also become a channel for communication between companies and their customers has been a central idea for some time as to how Facebook could ultimately earn money with the chat service. The online network bought WhatsApp in the year 2014 for around 22 billion dollars. Another consideration was advertising in the so-called status area of ​​the app, where users can post photos for their contacts for a day. But this was put on hold.

The founders of WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, left Facebook a few years ago. According to media reports, there were differences of opinion with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. Acton is a central donor for the Signal app – which uses the same encryption technology as WhatsApp. After the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Acton joined calls to leave Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg also introduced the plan to Facebook some time ago to focus more on completely encrypted communication overall. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram’s chat function will also share a technical platform. The US government and more than 40 states are currently calling for Facebook to be broken up by splitting off WhatsApp and Instagram. A common technical infrastructure would make such projects more difficult.

(tiw)