French Government Wants Whatsapp to Stop Sharing User Data With Its Mother Company Facebook
The French government recently issued an ultimatum to Facebook Inc. and questioned the company for gathering data from the users of their acquired messaging platform Whatsapp.
This week, a formal notice was posted by the Chair of the National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) that called out Whatsapp's practice of transferring user data to Facebook Inc. without proper consent from the users.
In the official letter, CNIL cited the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that Whatsapp applied to its users two years after Facebook's acquisition of the messaging app in 2014.
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CNIL noted that the new contract terms stated that Whatsapp would be gathering data from Whatsapp users to be sent to Facebook Inc. for the purposes of "targeted advertising, security and evaluation and improvement of services" or collectively referred to as "business intelligence."
After a series of investigations and hearings, the French agency said: "The CNIL was informed by the company that the data of its 10 Million French users have actually never been processed for targeted advertising purposes. However, the investigations found violations of the French Data Protection Act."
Meanwhile, CNIL said they recognize the need for the user data transfer for the purposes of maintaining security. However, the same principle cannot be applied for the sake of business intelligence, the French agency concludes.
"WHATSAPP cannot claim a legitimate interest to massively transfer data to the company FACEBOOK Inc. insofar as this transfer does not provide adequate guarantees allowing to preserve the interest or the fundamental freedoms of users since there is no mechanism whereby they can refuse it while continuing to use the application," CNIL further explained.
CNIL also cited the violations that Facebook and Whatsapp reportedly committed in terms of cooperating with the agency in the course of the investigation. This then resulted to the formal notice that the agency posted on Monday.
Facebook and Whatsapp have 30 days to comply to the country's data protection policies. Failure to do so will result to sanctions for violating the country's Data Protection Act.
