(Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp is delaying an update aimed at boosting business transactions on the platform following a riot of users who feared the messaging platform would water down its privacy policy in the process.
WhatsApp users have been notified this month that they are setting up a new privacy policy and terms, and reserve the right to share user data with the Facebook app.
It has screamed worldwide, causing a rush of new users to competing private messaging applications, including Telegram and Signal.
WhatsApp said on Friday it would delay the launch of the new policy until May from February, that the update is aimed at enabling users to send messages to businesses, and that the update does not affect personal conversations, which will have end-to-end coding.
“This update does not extend our ability to share data with Facebook,” reads a statement.
“While not everyone does business on WhatsApp today, we think more people will do it in the future, and it’s important that people are aware of these services,” he said.
Facebook has been implementing business tools on WhatsApp over the past year as it is increasing revenue from higher growth units such as WhatsApp and Instagram while merging e-commerce infrastructure across the company.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for $ 19 billion, but it was slow to make money from it.
The app already shares certain categories of personal data, including the user’s phone number and IP address, with Facebook.
“We do not keep track of who is sending or calling messages. We also cannot see your shared location and we do not share your contacts with Facebook, ”he said.
WhatsApp said in October that it would offer in-app purchases via Facebook Shops and that businesses using its customer service messaging apps would have the ability to store the messages on Facebook servers.
WhatsApp said at the time that chats with a company using the new hosting service would not be protected by the app’s end-to-end encryption.
Reporting by Katie Paul in San Francisco and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta and Cynthia Osterman