After months of controversy and a three-month delay, WhatsApp's new privacy policy launched today. The new terms allow the messaging app to share more data with its parent company, Facebook.

If you accept the terms, things will continue as usual, albeit with slightly less privacy. If you reject the policy, you are no longer welcome. But what happens if you neither accept nor reject the policy, but simply ignore it? Is there a loophole that allows us to continue using WhatsApp without compromising our privacy?

In the short term, yes, but that is only a short-term reprieve. In a new blog post, WhatsApp answers this burning question. Apparently, the app blocks contact from friends and family until you agree, and then pesters you more and more until they give up on you.

While WhatsApp assures users that they will not lose their functionality that day, they make it clear that this leniency will not last long. Initially, users will only be frequently urged to accept the new terms, but after "a few weeks" of being ignored, the urging will become "persistent" and "functionality will be restricted."

Initially, the app blocks the chat list, but incoming calls can be answered by voice or video. Notifications will be displayed and messages can be read this way as well. 9]

After a few weeks, if users do not agree to the terms, "they will no longer receive incoming calls or notifications, and WhatsApp will stop sending messages and calls."

After a few weeks, the app will "stop sending messages and calls.

This is not the same as having your WhatsApp presence deleted, but WhatsApp states that accounts are "normally deleted" after 120 days of no connection. If a user is unable to access the app, it is unlikely that the inactivity rule will ultimately not apply, even if it is not a direct consequence of the new agreement.

A rather blatant attempt to force users to comply with the new terms, WhatsApp is clearly confident that they can get their way on this. Perhaps it's the confidence of having 2 billion active users worldwide that makes them so.

Still, it is a great opportunity for rivals to close the gap, and both Signal and Telegram are reportedly enjoying an increase in members as a result of the debacle. Yesterday, Telegram made this point strongly as the deadline approached.

This is the message from WhatsApp co-founder and Signal Foundation member Brian Acton, who has been urging the company to cut ties with Facebook since 2018. Acton left Facebook in 2017, three years after selling WhatsApp for $16 billion, and has not been shy about his views on the app since. 'I sold user privacy for the greater good,' he told Forbes the following year. ''I made choices and compromises, and I live with them every day.''