Ireland’s data regulator fined WhatsApp € 225 million for violating EU privacy rules.
WhatsApp fined 225 million euros for violating European data protection law by failing to inform its users of how it shared their data with its parent company, Facebook. This is a penalty more than four times greater than what the watchdog had originally proposed. Indeed, Irish protection body originally called for a fine of 50 million euros.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) explained the decision in a summary of 89 pages. The company is not currently in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of Europe, which governs how tech companies collect and use data in the EU.
WhatsApp’s new privacy policy also in the sights of regulators
This fine, which is the largest ever imposed by the Irish Data Protection Commission (CPD) and the second largest imposed on an organization under EU data protection law, might not be the last.
Indeed, this judgment comes shortly after the controversy surrounding the new privacy policy of the messaging application. The latter could be illegal according to the main German data protection regulator. We recently learned that WhatsApp would not force you to accept its new privacy policy, according to information collected by WABetaInfo on the beta version of the application.
The social network told our colleagues from Android Central that “ WhatsApp is committed to providing a secure and private service. We have worked to ensure that the information we provide is transparent and complete and we will continue to do so. We disagree with today’s ruling on the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate. We will appeal this decision “.
Source: Bloomberg