PALO ALTO / CALIFORNIA (IT-Times) – The chat and messaging service WhatsApp, which belongs to the empire of the social media giant Facebook, has been fined by the European Union (EU).
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WhatsApp, the instant messaging service from Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), has to pay a fine of 225 million euros or around 265 million US dollars for data protection violations in the European Union (EU).
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According to the European supervisory authorities in Brussels, the chat service has failed to fully disclose how user data is collected and passed on or processed by European citizens.
It is also currently unclear whether and, if so, how the data will be passed on to other Facebook units. It is clear that WhatsApp shares user information with the parent company Facebook.
The Irish Data Protection Commission imposed the penalty on behalf of a body that represents all EU member states. WhatsApp now has the opportunity to appeal the judgment.
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) had asked the chat and messenger service with its around two billion users worldwide to improve its own data protection guidelines and communication with users.
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