Irish Watchdog Ordered to Probe Facebook Use of WhatsApp Data

Ireland's privacy watchdog must investigate whether Facebook is wrongfully processing WhatsApp Ireland (IE) users' personal data by combining or comparing it with other data sets processed by other Facebook companies in the context of other apps or services they offer, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) said Thursday. It told the Irish Data Protection Commission not to impose any final measures on Facebook Ireland (IE) now. The board's first "urgent decision" under the general data protection regulation followed a request from the Hamburg, Germany, data protection authority (DPA); it ordered Facebook to stop processing WhatsApp user data for its own purposes after changing the terms of service and privacy policy applicable to European users of WhatsApp (IE). In exceptional circumstances, GDPR lets DPAs impose provisional measures when they believe there's an urgent need to act to safeguard data subjects' rights. The board said those conditions weren't met. Given contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties in WhatsApp's user-facing information, some written commitments adopted by Facebook IE and WhatsApp IE's written submissions, it's "not in a position to determine with certainty which processing operations are actually being carried out and in which capacity." The Hamburg order "was based on fundamental misunderstandings as to the purpose and effect of the update to our terms of service," emailed a company spokesperson.