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| WhatsApp has a month to stop sharing data with Facebook |
France’s privacy watchdog on Monday asked WhatsApp to stop
sharing users’ data with its parent company Facebook within a month.
The Chair of the National
Data Protection Commission (CNIL) had asked WhatsApp to provide a sample of the
French users’ data transferred to Facebook.
“The company explained that
it could not supply the sample requested by the CNIL since it is located in the
US, it considers that it is only subject to the legislation of this (US)
country,” CNIL posted on its website late on Monday.
“As a result, the Chair of
the CNIL decided to issue formal notice to the company WhatsApp to comply with
the Data Protection Act within one month,” it added.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp in
2014. On August 25, 2016, WhatsApp released a new version of its Terms of
Service and Privacy Policy where it explained that “from now on, its users’
data are transferred to Facebook for three purposes: targeted advertising,
security and evaluation and improvement of services (business intelligence)”.
“While the security purpose
seems to be essential to the efficient functioning of the application, it is
not the case for the ‘business intelligence’ purpose which aims at improving
performances and optimising the use of the application through the analysis of
its users’ behaviour,” noted Chair of the CNIL.ALSO READ: WhatsApp and user privacy: Your top
questions answered
The watchdog considered that the data transfer for “business
intelligence” purpose is not based on the legal basis required by the Data
Protection Act for any processing.
It then decided to send a
formal public notice in order to ensure the highest level of transparency on
the massive data transfer from WhatsApp to Facebook Inc. and, thus, to alert to
the need for individuals concerned to keep their data under control.
This is not the first
incident where WhatsApp-Facebook data sharing has been condemned. Germany has
also ordered Facebook to stop collecting data from WhatsApp users. After
repeated criticism, Facebook also agreed to stop collecting WhatsApp user data
in the UK
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