WhatsApp Fined €225 Million in Ireland

Ireland’s Data Protection Authority (DPC) fines the WhatsApp mobile app €225 million. The company is said to have been insufficiently transparent about the processing of personal information.

WhatsApp, part of technology giant Facebook, has already said it will appeal.

According to the Irish broadcaster RTE, this is the highest fine that the DPC has issued to date. Only Amazon has to pay more for a violation of European privacy legislation. In July, the webshop in Luxembourg was fined 746 million euros.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation that standardizes the rules on personal data throughout the European Union. Since the GDPR came into effect in May 2018, privacy watchdogs in European countries can take far-reaching measures. For example, they can issue fines of up to 4% of a company’s global revenues.

According to the DPC, WhatsApp broke the rules because the company was not transparent enough about how the data of users and non-users is processed. They would also not have provided enough information about how data is shared between WhatsApp and other Facebook components. In addition to the fine, WhatsApp is also summoned to put things in order.

The Irish regulator had first proposed a €50 million fine for WhatsApp. But the other European privacy protectors disagreed. WhatsApp itself says it does not agree with the decision and plans to appeal.