It has been a difficult week for some users of the instant messaging mobile app WhatsApp in Costa Rica.

A few weeks ago, social media giant Facebook acquired WhatsApp in a multi-billion dollar transaction that recalled the heady days of the Dot Com Bubble and its subsequently calamitous crash on Wall Street. More than 600 million WhatsApp users around the world worried that some Facebook features that they do not particularly like on Facebook would eventually appear on their beloved WhatsApp. That is precisely what occurred earlier this week in Costa Rica when a WhatsApp update introduced the concept of blue double check marks to indicate a read receipt confirmation.

Privacy-conscious WhatsApp users in Costa Rica were the first to complain about these blue double check marks, which are sometimes referred to as “palomitas” since they resemble abstract doves in flight. It is important to note that WhatsApp already tells users if their messages have reached the devices of their intended recipients; in fact, this is a very attractive improvement over using this mobile app instead of the Short Message Service (SMS). The new read receipt features goes further by letting users know whether or not a message was actually opened.

Some users cheered this new feature that would put pressure on recipients to not let messages linger unopened, or else to not lie about whether they actually read a message or not. To this end, workarounds to escape the blue WhatsApp check marks, at least the Android-powered version, are already circulating. According to SoftPedia News:

WhatsApp made the mistake of introducing the blue check marks feature without giving users the possibility to choose whether or not they want it enabled on their smartphones.

Learning from its mistakes, the company seems to be determined to address concerns of privacy invasion by adding the option to disable the blue check marks in the application.

The current options to disable the WhatsApp blue check marks annoyance range from simple settings changes to creating widgets and scrolling through messages that are not too long; alas, these are temporary workarounds that will fail to assuage privacy concerns until a new update is rolled out. In the meantime,. use of WhatsApp in Costa Rica continues to grow at a very fast rate, and marketing experts are paying attention.