The group is fined 5.5 million euros for violating the GDPR. This comes on top of another €390m fine he received in early January.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was fined €5.5 million by the Irish regulator on Thursday for breaching European data regulation (GDPR) with its WhatsApp messaging, which was limited compared to that €390 million received in early January.
In this new decision, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) notes that the digital giant has failed to meet its “transparency obligations“and it was based on an incorrect legal basis”for the processing of personal data for the purpose of improving the service and security“.
The regulator, acting on behalf of the EU, gives the Californian group six months to comply.
This sanction is based on reasons similar to the one announced in early January, which targeted the social networks Facebook and Instagram. But the previous sentence also accused these Meta subsidiaries of omissions related to the processing of personal data for targeted advertising purposes, thus risking a negative impact on the group’s advertising revenues.
Meta appeals
Meta quickly announced plans to appeal and was quick to add that the fine did not prevent personalized advertising.
The privacy association Noyb, behind these procedures launched in 2018, had accused the group of having reinterpreted the consent”as a simple civil law contract», which does not allow, in particular, to refuse this type of personalized advertising.
The fine this time is much lower, because it does not concern targeted advertising but also because “the DPC had already fined WhatsApp a very substantial 225 million euros“for facts that bore”during the same period“, he claims.
The regulator had in fact criticized WhatsApp, in September 2021, for failing to fulfill its transparency obligations, in particular on data transfers to other group companies.
Meta announced it would also appeal Thursday’s decision, saying in a statement sent to AFP that “the operation (of WhatsApp) is technically and legally compliantto European regulations.
But the Noyb association judges on the contrary that the new sanction does not go far enough, explaining in a statement that “if WhatsApp doesn’t serve personalized ads, it provides +metadata+ to Facebook and Instagram“.
The latter, if they do not betray the content of the messages”,reveal a lot of information» on the user’s interlocutors and on their habits, «which can then be used to personalize advertisingon the group’s other platforms, the association says.