Facebook Inc.\u2019s WhatsApp was ordered to pay a 225 million-euro (R4 billion) penalty for failing to be transparent about how it handled personal information, its first fine under beefed-up European Union data protection law.<\/p>\n
The Irish Data Protection Commission \u2014 Silicon Valley\u2019s main privacy watchdog in Europe \u2014 said it found violations in the way WhatsApp explained how it processed users\u2019 and non-users\u2019 data, as well as how data was shared between WhatsApp and other Facebook companies.<\/p>\n
The fine comes weeks after Amazon.com Inc.\u00a0was hit\u00a0with a record 746 million-euro penalty in Luxembourg, where it has its European base, for processing personal data in violation of the EU\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation.<\/p>\n
Under the three-year-old GDPR law, authorities have powers to fine companies as much as 4% of their annual sales.<\/p>\n
The rules put watchdogs based in a company\u2019s chosen EU hub in charge of supervising them.<\/p>\n
But the Irish regulator, which has at least 28 privacy probes open targeting tech giants such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google, has faced mounting criticism for taking too long to wrap up its cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate,\u201d a WhatsApp spokesperson said. \u201cWe will appeal this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Irish authority said that it would also order the messaging service to take remedial action to bring its data processing communication into compliance.<\/p>\n
This includes making it clearer how users can lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.<\/p>\n
WhatsApp announced in an Irish regulatory filing in November it set aside 77.5 million euros to pay potential fines from at least two probes by Ireland\u2019s data protection watchdog.<\/p>\n
The European Data Protection Board, a panel of EU data authorities, said in a statement Thursday that it pushed for a higher privacy fine for WhatsApp leading to the penalty imposed by Ireland.<\/p>\n
An initial draft of the fining decision by the Irish watchdog\u00a0stumbled\u00a0amid several objections by EU counterparts, including \u201cthe appropriateness of the envisaged corrective measures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s fine also comes amid added pressure on WhatsApp over policy changes it announced in January.<\/p>\n
It was forced to delay the overhaul until May after a\u00a0backlash\u00a0from users and regulators over what data the messaging service collects and how it shares that information with its parent Facebook.<\/p>\n
The European Data Protection Board, a panel of EU authorities,\u00a0said\u00a0in July that Facebook\u2019s practices linked to WhatsApp data should be examined \u201cas a matter of priority\u201d by the Irish privacy watchdog.<\/p>\n
The Irish authority in turn said it would consider any regulatory follow-up where needed, but that its most advanced WhatsApp probe had already included \u201can in-depth inquiry into WhatsApp\u2019s privacy policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
WhatsApp was hit with a massive fine for failing to be transparent about how it handled personal information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":405609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17934,16],"tags":[161,71226,71948,2594],"class_list":["post-412452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","category-smartphones","category-software","tag-facebook","tag-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr","tag-irish-data-protection-commission","tag-whatsapp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412466,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412452\/revisions\/412466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}