With WhatsApp pushing the revised terms of use, German regulators also issued an emergency ban on Facebook mobile WhatsApp user data earlier. The Hamburg Commission for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HmbBfDI) pointed out that WhatsApp’s new data phone policy and Facebook’s unremitting efforts to force users to accept have violated the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
HmbBfDI Commissioner Johannes Caspar said in a press release: Facebook has a bad history of privacy abuse, in addition to the early Cambridge Analytica scandal, there are also 5 million records recently leaked. More seriously, Caspar is worried that WhatsApp’s insufficiently transparent advertising policy may adversely affect the upcoming German election in September.
From Cambridge Analytica to the time of the latest data breach, Facebook has been caught in a number of scandals of inadequate data protection in recent years, which have had a great impact on more than 500 million Facebook users worldwide.
This shows the scope and danger of large-scale analysis, and more than privacy, it also uses personal data to influence voters’ decisions, so there is the possibility of manipulating democratic elections. Given that nearly 60 million WhatsApp users overlap with the German federal elections in September 2021, the related risks have become more specific.
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Earlier, HmbBfDI had issued a three-month emergency ban on WhatsApp’s data collection policy and requested the European Data Protection Commission (EDPC) to implement the case across Europe. If the EDPC finds that WhatsApp violates the General Data Protection Regulation, Germany and other EU member states may upgrade it to a permanent ban before WhatsApp implements the revised new policy.
Even so, Facebook still denies any wrongdoing. A spokesperson said in an interview with Bloomberg that the committee’s emergency order was based on a “fundamental misunderstanding” of WhatsApp’s terms of use, so the company would still implement new terms of use against Germany’s emergency ban.
It should be pointed out that this is not the first head-to-head confrontation between Johannes Caspar and WhatsApp. As early as 2016, the commissioner asked Facebook to stop collecting WhatsApp user data. At that time, the company chose to cooperate with Germany to solve related problems, but this time, the social media giant clearly showed a stronger unwillingness to cooperate.
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