The deadline for the controversial WhatsApp privacy policy update is just a few days away but the company has announced a few relaxations for users. WhatsApp says it will not be deleting any accounts that will not accept the new privacy policy by May 15th. It will apply a few limitations to these accounts after a few more weeks and then eventually delete them.

In the updated FAQs section for the privacy policy, WhatsApp clarifies that "no one will have their accounts deleted or lose functionality of WhatsApp on May 15th because of this update". It has already started showing pop-up reminders to users who have not accepted the new privacy policy yet. These reminders will continue to keep popping up if a user does not accept even after the May 15th deadline. The company says it wants users to have some more time to read and understand the changes before they tap that accept button.

This approach will continue for "several weeks" and if someone still does not accept, the aforementioned pop-up notification will become persistent. This will result in limited functionality of WhatsApp for those users. It will allow users to receive incoming audio and video calls as well as respond to incoming texts through the notification. The users will not be able to access their chat lists, initiate a conversation, and make calls.

This limited functionality will continue to be available for a "few weeks" after which WhatsApp will stop that as well. It will stop sending notifications about new messages and calls to the users' devices. In other words, the application will simply become non-functional for them. WhatsApp says it will not delete any account for not accepting the new policy but it already has a policy for deleting inactive accounts after 120 days. This particular policy will be applicable to all users.