Video sharing social network TikTok has removed more than 500,000 accounts in Italy following an intervention by the country’s data protection watchdog earlier this year ordering it to recheck the age of all Italian users and block access to any under the age of 13. Between February 9 and April 21 more than 12.5M Italian […]
May 13, 2021
LONDON (AP) A German privacy watchdog banned Facebook on Tuesday from gathering data on users of its WhatsApp chat app, citing an update to its privacy policy that it said breaches stringent European data protection rules.
Hamburg’s Data Protection Commissioner Johannes Caspar said he issued an emergency three-month order prohibiting the social network from processing WhatsApp personal data for its own purposes.
“The order is intended to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the many millions of users who approve to the terms of use throughout Germany,” Caspar said in a statement. “The aim is to prevent disadvantages and damage associated with such a black-box procedure.”
Facebook’s new privacy policy for WhatsApp is illegal, according to a German regulator.
On Tuesday, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information ordered Facebook to stop processing personal data from WhatsApp, citing problematic and contradictory terms in the privacy policy.
The social network has been asking users to accept the new privacy policy by May 15, claiming it’ll lead to no changes to your personal chats. Instead, the updated terms are more about empowering Facebook to manage the messages you have with businesses over the app.
However, Germany’s privacy regulator is concerned the new policy will also give Facebook the power to transfer data to third-party companies. “There is no sufficient legal basis for processing by Facebook for its own purposes, regardless of WhatsApp s current consent to the terms of use,” the Hamburg Commissioner said in a post translated from German.