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May 15 is looming, which is the date by which you’ll need to make the decision to stick to WhatsApp and accept their new, and widely criticised, privacy policy, or suffer the consequences.

This privacy policy came with a delay as WhatsApp wanted to allow for more time to educate the public about what the update entails.

Now, you have just three days left to get all the info you need before the privacy policy kicks in and WhatsApp starts hounding you to accept the update.

If you choose to accept the update, great – chat away unhindered.

If you hesitate, however, WhatsApp could get a lot harder to use.

The good news is that you won’t lose your account.

As per 9to5Mac, WhatsApp mentioned last week that it would not delete or deactivate the account of those who do not accept the new terms.

The bad news is that the company has now stated that it will somewhat punish users who do not accept the new privacy policies, through “limited functionality” on their accounts.

This is what that means, as stated on the WhatsApp website:

• You won’t be able to access your chat list, but you can still answer incoming phone and video calls. If you have notifications enabled, you can tap on them to read or respond to a message or call back a missed phone or video call.
• After a few weeks of limited functionality, you won’t be able to receive incoming calls or notifications and WhatsApp will stop sending messages and calls to your phone.

Basically, despite WhatsApp saying that you won’t lose your account if you don’t agree with how the company is going to use your data, it is making the app nearly unusable.

Bear in mind that WhatsApp’s policy states that accounts are “generally deleted after 120 days of inactivity” – so you’ll probably lose the account after some time anyway.

Not to mention that if you continue to use Facebook and/or Instagram you’re still handing over every detail of your life.

There are other options, and many have decided to move over to other chat apps like Telegram, which makes it easy to export your WhatsApp chats.

There’s also Signal and, of course, Apple’s iMessage.

Tick tock.

[sources:9to5mac&whatsapp]