Stern rebuke to WhatsApp and Facebook from French privacy watchdog
Luxembourg — Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp was given a one-month ultimatum by one of Europe’s strictest privacy watchdogs, facing an order to stop sharing user data with its parent without getting the necessary consent. France’s data protection authority, CNIL, gave a sharp warning to WhatsApp by issuing a formal notice, criticising it for “insufficiently” co-operating. The decision comes a year after European Union privacy authorities said they had “serious concerns” about the sharing of WhatsApp user data for purposes that were not included in the terms of service and privacy policy when people signed up to the service. CNIL “decided to make this formal notice public 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,” the regulator said in a statement on its website on Monday. Facebook faces regulatory hurdles throughout Eur...
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