Facebook-owned chat messaging app, WhatsApp has been fined $267 million US dollars or 225 million euros by the Irish data privacy watchdog for violating the GDPR.
On Thursday, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said that WhatsApp failed in explaining how the personal data of Europeans is gathered and utilized and also how it shares the information with the parent company, i.e Facebook.
WhatsApp, a chat messaging app used by over 2 billion people across the globe, has already been ordered to make changes in its privacy policy so that it complies with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. As a result, this will make the policy lengthier than before.
A WhatsApp spokesperson said that the company plans to appeal the decision.
The spokesperson further said that WhatsApp is dedicated to offering its clients a secure and private end-to-end encrypted service. All these years the company has been working on assuring that the information they provide is clear and complete and will keep on doing so.
WhatsApp spokesperson also said that the company doesn’t agree with the decision today about the transparency WhatsApp offered to the people in 2018 and the penalties are totally disproportionate.
A few months back in July, Amazon was fined a hefty amount of $887 million by Luxembourg’s data regulator for violating GDPR rules.
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