WhatsApp users have been told they have until May 15 to agree to the application's new privacy policy, otherwise app functionality will become limited.

A new post on the company's FAQ website explains how the time its two billion users have to agree to the new policy has been extended. They now have until May 15, and if they have not agreed to the policy by then, their app's functionality will be restricted.

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The app will not be deleted, but the company explains how "you won't have full functionality of WhatsApp until you accept. For a short time, you'll be able to receive calls and notifications, but won't be able to read or send messages from the app."

Agreeing to the privacy policy changes will restore app functionality to normal, but users will only have a few weeks to do this after the May 15 deadline. This deadline has been extended from its original date of February 8.

WhatsApp's new privacy policy has caused controversy among some users, who believe that agreeing to the change grants the company permission to share private messages with Facebook, which owns WhatsApp.

The policy change relates to WhatsApp's move into e-commerce GearBrain

The changes relate to an expansion into the e-commerce sector by WhatsApp, focusing on a system where users will be able to communicate with businesses using the app. It has been wrongly claimed that the change will allow Facebook to see messages shared between WhatsApp users and their contacts, but these remain encrypted and can only be seen by the sender and the recipient – not by Facebook or even WhatsApp itself.

Instead, the new privacy policy refers to how payment and transaction data may be stored on Facebook servers and used for targeted advertising. Furthermore, the sharing of WhatsApp user information with Facebook is not new, and the sharing of personal information like phone numbers has gone on since 2016.

Users who want to leave WhatsApp before May 15 can export their chat history and download a report of their account. WhatsApp warns that deleting an account is something that cannot be reversed, and doing so erases your message history with all contacts, removes you from all group chats and deletes your WhatsApp backups.