Christian George
Whatsapp has been fined €5.5milliln by Irish Data Protection Commission for breaching of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The fine was described as administrative and is relatively low in comparison to other sanctions imposed on Meta-owned services in Ireland in recent months, as reported by the Independent.
The commission has also directed the Meta-owned instant messaging service to bring its data processing operations into compliance within six months.
Prior to this fine, the commission had fined the Meta-owned services in Ireland to the tune of 225M euro over transparency breaches.
WhatsApp Ireland now informs users that if they wanted to use the app they had to click “agree and continue” to accept the terms of service and, if they declined to do so, then they would be unable to access it. By this observation, users are of the opinion that WhatsApp is forcing them to accept its terms.
Independent further revealed that WhatsApp Ireland had argued that acceptance of the updated terms of service saw the user enter a contract with it.
It further contended that the processing of users’ data in connection with the delivery of its service was necessary for the performance of that contract, and that included the provision of service improvement and security features.
