A pop up message that appears when the application is opened. Yet another piece of a story, the one between Whatsapp, or rather Meta, and the European authorities with respect to the use of (our) data by the Californian group. A simple message that perhaps many will have ignored in a second, the release of which began on February 18. But what does it really mean?
This is a communication to which the platform has been forced. It serves precisely to provide further information on how the messaging app uses user data. In fact, at the end of January the group had received a formal letter from the European Commission: a yellow card, so to speak, with respect to people’s privacy. The European Commissioner for Justice, the Belgian Didier Reynders, had asked in a formal letter for guarantees on how the data of European users were shared with commercial partners (especially Americans). And he forced to explain it again to the users.
The message, which invites users to view the reorganized Privacy Policyis part of the larger transatlantic game on the sharing and processing of Europeans’ data outside a framework agreement: two agreements with the United States, in recent years, have made it possible to proceed in this direction. The first was called Safe Harbor, was and signed in 2000 and was then rejected by the European Court of Justice in 2015 with the sentence known as the Schrems case. Its replacement, the so-called Privacy Shield approved in 2016, was instead suspended by the Court in July 2020. Therefore, at the moment, the data exchange takes place on the basis of the so-called Standard Contractual Clauses of the platform.
In between there are the sanctions that, in the meantime, Meta has had to suffer due to its inability to explain in a simple and precise way the various changes to the privacy policies: the last one dates back to last September when Ireland, the European headquarters of Facebook , imposed a fine of 225 million euros for violating EU data privacy laws, and more specifically for not having “fulfilled its obligations of transparency” regarding the communication to users on the use of data. Even in that case, the regulators – it was the Irish Data Protection Commission (Dpc), the European agency of reference as regards the control of the principles of the European regulation on personal data, the so-called GDPR – accused the app of not having informed citizens of the European Union enough about what it does with their dataand how they are shared with the Menlo Park company.
The last message that perhaps caused more than a few users to be questioned is therefore, as we said, yet another obligatory step in this tug-of-war over European data. It is no coincidence that it contains a reference to the Irish Commission. However, the Italian Privacy Guarantor had also contested some Whatsapp practices, starting with the exchange of data from one platform to another of the same holding, that is, between the chat and Facebook, bringing them to the attention of the European Commission.
The message therefore changes nothing either in practice or in theory. In the sense that chat conversations remain end-to-end encrypted. It is therefore just the umpteenth attempt by Meta to calm the waters with the European control on data: the European standards in the transfer of data and information of European citizens to markets provide that those who want to process them should manage them in the same way that the EU requires European players to process citizens’ data. Indeed, it would be a strong contradiction to apply high standards in Europe and allow non-EU groups to do what they want with them, as too often continues to happen, for example with applications that for short moments trigger short but from the point of view of data harmful manias. .
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Source: Vanity Fair
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
