WhatsApp ordered to stop sharing user data with Facebook or face penalty

Last year, WhatsApp updated its service and announced that it would share user data with Facebook for certain reasons, one of which being security purposes. However, recently WhatsApp was ordered to stop sharing user data with Facebook.

The social media site WhatsApp said that the reason for this addition to its service with its parent company Facebook was to be able to develop targeting advertising, improve security measures and also to gather general business intelligence.

CNIL, a French regulatory body that ensures data privacy and security, investigated these claims by WhatsApp and found that the security and evaluation reason was true, but the business intelligence and targeted advertising reasons were invalid, plus, the app did not inform the users about doing so that violated ‘the fundamental freedoms of users’. Thus, as a result, the CNIL ordered WhatsApp to stop sharing data with Facebook, reported Tech Juice.

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Upon summoning, WhatsApp informed CNIL that no data of any of its French users was processed for targeted advertising, which, however, turned out to be false and led to CNIL labeling it as a violation of French Data Protection Act.

The watchdog mentioned that the authority taken by WhatsApp is invalid as it is set to be able to use the app and the only technique to opt out to sharing of data is to uninstall the app. Moreover, WhatsApp also refused to give CNIL the data samples collected by them, arguing that French law does not apply to them as they are based in the United States.

In the end, WhatsApp is given a one-month time-frame to obey the order. Failure to do so might end up in the app getting sanctioned nationwide, reported The Guardian.