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Record €225m fine for WhatsApp Ireland over data protection breaches
- roomey 5y agoI wonder if it will have an impact on them at all. > > It is the largest fine ever imposed by the DPC and the second largest penalty ever levied on an organisation under EU data laws
- jsnell 5y agoOf course fines of that size have an impact, no matter how rich the company is, because the fines aren't necessarily one-off events. If they don't fix whatever the fine was given for but just carry on as nothing changed, there will be progressively bigger fines down the line. The more interesting question is what the impact will be. Based on the article, it might be just changes to a privacy policy that no normal human will read anyway: > It is understood that WhatsApp believes the fine is not about its data sharing practices but the level of detail provided in its 2018 privacy policy.
- PedroBatista 5y agoWhile this fine doesn't go unnoticed, let's be honest, they wipe their asses with €225m bills every morning. In this case crime pays because they earn SO MUCH more. And it's not clear they will pay that amount, in most cases they drag things in court and do an extrajudicial settlement with a fraction of that years later. It's a nuisance because now some schmuck has to come up with a way to bypass these issues while maintained the same operation.
- cbg0 5y agoThis is a very defeatist view of things. The purpose of fines is not to destroy a company, it's to correct its bad behavior - if they keep doing it you can fine them again for even more money.
- melomal 5y agoTrouble is that most 'bad' companies (banks/pharma in particular) allocate and write off money for fines as a cost of doing business. These fines won't cripple a company, it will just allow them to test what limits they can push and so on.
- HPsquared 5y agoKramer: It's a write-off for them. Jerry: How is it a write-off? Kramer: They just write it off. Jerry: Write it off what? Kramer: Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything. Jerry: You don't even know what a write-off is. Kramer: Do you? Jerry: No, I don't. Kramer: But they do. And they're the ones writing it off.
- jeltz 5y agoThey can test the limits but not push on. If thet push on then thet will eventualy get fined into bankrupcy.
- bluecalm 5y agoIt's about the size of the whole Facebook, which Whatsapp is only a small part of, daily revenue - revenue, not profit. The fine is humongous and they surely don't wipe their asses with such amounts every morning.
- eitland 5y ago> let's be honest, they wipe their asses with €225m bills every morning. Now that share holders are aware of it that can only go on for so long before they'll have to find cheaper toilet paper. Deliberately misunderstanding here, but I think it adds to the discussion.
- bsksi 5y agoThe article doesn't seem to explain at all what the specific violations are. The article also seems like it was written for the "simple English" Wikipedia. I get all anxious with this new thing of putting every sentence in its own paragraph.
- tummybug 5y agoThis is actually considered best practice now for content for public consumption. If you can lower the average reading age for understanding the content you increase the amount of people that can read it.
- rpadovani 5y agoMoreover, not everybody is fluent in English. Considering the article is about an EU-related fine, where less than 1% of the population uses English as mother-tongue, I'd say trying to be as accessible as possible is good.
- rpadovani 5y agoNoyb[0] does an outstanding amount of work to help EU citizens enforcing their data sovereignty, not only against US companies but against any company that doesn't respect privacy-related laws (e.g., [1]). As EU citizen, I am more than happy to support them through membership, and I urge any fellow citizen who is interested in privacy issues, to inform themselves over nyob, and support them! [0]: https://noyb.eu/en https://noyb.eu/en [1]: https://noyb.eu/en/data-voodoo-credit-ranking-agency-crif-creates-credit-rating-out-thin-air https://noyb.eu/en/data-voodoo-credit-ranking-agency-crif-cr...
- hawk_ 5y agoThat's great, was looking for something like this. Will look closer and hope they don't pivot to charging money from companies for not fighting them.
- rpadovani 5y agoThey are an Austrian no-profit with public reports: https://noyb.eu/en/annual-reports https://noyb.eu/en/annual-reports
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> hope they don't pivot to charging money from companies for not fighting them. I hope so too. It's something that's been on my mind in general terms - it feels like all organizations (both for- and nonprofit) decay over time, eventually becoming corrupt. I'm not sure there's a cure for this. So we can either never support any organization, or support them while they're still pristine, stop when they go bad, and hope someone else will appear to carry the torch. Not supporting is the easy choice, but you can't build a civilization that way. So I guess vigilance is the name of the game. I'm gonna support noyb until they go bad.
- uitstel894 5y agoAfter clicking on the link, I was automatically searching for the cookie banner... oh wait, maybe not here.
- hamburglar1 5y agoFacebook generates this much free cash flow in 3 days. This is irrelevant
- JackPoach 5y agoWell, when each country does that it becomes economically unfeasible. Such fines work and work very well, once FB realizes that they lose more money from unethical behavior than they make, they'll stop it. I don't believe that any corporation is evil. I do believe that there are temptations to do bad things in order to make money, even if short term. This corrects such behavior. Hopefully.
- rubyn00bie 5y agoPlease provide any proof they work at all. Facebook has been fined larger amounts previously and continues to receive more fines for violations of user privacy. I would say there is currently very strong proof in the real world against what you’re assuming is true. Until a fine is ~10% of their stock value they won’t even consider it. This might as well be free for Facebook.
- JackPoach 5y agoDid you study the work of Ralph Nader and the auto industry? Or the history of tobacco industry? There are multiple examples when it worked in the past. I am quite confident that when abuse goes too far, the pushback is even bigger. I just don't want to oversimplify the issue and say that any big corporation or any IT giant is bad by nature. It's growing pains in my book.
- rubyn00bie 5y agoYeah I know all about Nader. What you’re talking about took decades of fines after those companies lobbied endlessly to avoid blame. I think you just supported my argument. Big tobacco companies literally couldn’t be fined enough to make a difference for 60+ years. I’d guess sunshine is more correlated than fines to preventing large corporations from doing awful things. I’m not sure why you’re shilling the opposite.
- teekert 5y agoWho else is protesting by still refusing the new terms and conditions?!
- kilburn 5y agoI still do. Furthermore, at this point I'm having two questions about it: 1. The notice clearly said that if I didn't accept I wouldn't be able to continue to use WhatsApp after some date in the past (I don't remember it exactly). This is clearly not true. Wouldn't this fact be grounds for invalidation of all consents they gathered before? 2. At this point I must have declined accepting at least 100 times. Shouldn't it be required to have a "no, never" option in there? In its absence, shouldn't I be able to make the case that the one time I click on "agree" it was by mistake? How is this method of agreement valid whatsoever?
- saddlerustle 5y agoWhy? The only thing that actually changed in the new privacy policy is allowing business messaging.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoPersonally, I'm just refusing to accept it to see what (if anything) they'll actually do about it.
- kilburn 5y agoThat's what they want you to believe. The other point is: > Additional Information On How We Handle Your Data. Our updated Terms and Privacy Policy provide more information on how we process your data, and our commitment to privacy. How nice! However, this is specifically targeted at GDPR-covered users. GDPR won't allow them to do anything that is not explained (and hence "consented" to by the user). To me, the logical conclusion is that their lawyers went "we can't do XXX, YYY, ZZZ unless we explain them explicitly". Then their marketing team spun it up as "look at how nice we are". The reality is that they wouldn't explain shit unless they absolutely need to. Since they didn't explain before, I'm pretty sure there are things they can't (legally) do with my information under the previous agreement that they would be able to (legally) do with the new one.
- bof_ 5y agoDoes anyone know if these fines ever get collected? And if they get collected what % of the headline figure? Or are many of these headlines just a pay day for lawyers?
- cycomanic 5y agoThis is not the same as class-action suits, in fact it wasn't even a court case. So why lawyers were likely involved, the ones on the DPC side were likely employed and therefore don't receive a payout. Considering if this gets collected, I certainly assume so, do you have any indication it doesn't?
- js212 5y agoThis will get knocked down. Look at the British Airlines and Marriott cases for the UK ICO.
- the_mitsuhiko 5y agoNotable here is that the Irish Data Protection Commission does not want to enforce GDPR or fine Facebook. They are kinda forced by law. They are famously slacking, likely bcause Ireland wants to be a hub for large US IT companies. This large fine mostly came because they were forced by the European Data Protection Board.
- WA 5y agoInteresting notes: > However, WhatsApp Ireland, which had previously set aside €77.5m for a possible fine Right there. The cost of violations is priced in. Companies actually misbehave and simply accept a potential fine as a business expense. > The company is also understood to feel that the fine is out of step with previous GDPR related fines. It just sucks for our shareholders if the fine is higher than we expected. > Sources close to the company, which is owned by Facebook, said rather than making its policy shorter and less complicated, the decision would mean it would have to add even more information to its already long and complicated privacy policy. The lies, incredible. Just don’t collect data, then your privacy statement is very very simple. Only complicated agreements require complicated 5,000 word privacy declarations.
- AmericanChopper 5y agoWait until you find out it was designed that way, and the whole thing is actually just a tariff on service imports to the EU in disguise.
- a3w 5y agoNo.
- tgv 5y ago"Give up your privacy and let Zuckerberg earn even more money!"
- AmericanChopper 5y agoMoney is the only thing the law is about, not privacy. Even if you disagree with my opinion that it was designed to be this way, there’s not really an argument to be made against the suggestion that all it’s accomplished is periodically fining foreign service providers (plenty of fines to EU businesses too, but there has never been and will never a large one). If it was designed to protect privacy, it is very clearly failing to achieve that objective.
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- BeniBoy 5y agoOne important thing to note is that the DPC (Irish DPA) did not want to fine WhatsApp and only did so after being forced by other DPAs through the arbitration process. You can consult the EDPB decision on that matter here: https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/binding-decision-board-art-65/binding-decision-12021-dispute-arisen_fr https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/binding-... EDIT: Max Schrems' reaction (NOYB): >"We welcome the first decision by the Irish regulator. However, the DPC gets about ten thousand complaints per year since 2018 and this is the first major fine. The DPC also proposed an initial € 50 million fine and was forced by the other European data protection authorities to move towards € 225 million, which is still only 0.08% of the turnover of the Facebook Group. The GDPR foresees fines of up to 4% of the turnover. This shows how the DPC is still extremely dysfunctional." source: https://noyb.eu/en/statement-dpc-issues-eu-225-million-fine-whatsapp https://noyb.eu/en/statement-dpc-issues-eu-225-million-fine-...
- josefx 5y agoSo acting as a tax haven was not enough, they also have to undermine every other EU regulation to keep their cash cows happy? Can't we just kick them out already?
- messe 5y agoOnly 8 of around 40 DPAs that were involved in the process disagreed with the Irish DPC's conclusion according to TFA, so I don't think it's fully fair to lay the blame solely on Ireland here.
- cataphract 5y agoOnly 8 formally objected. That doesn't mean the remaining ones agreed with the draft decision. They may not even have looked at it.
- croes 5y agoWhich 8?
- qalmakka 5y agoThat's still pocket change for Facebook. In order to have any deterrence effect, any fine should probably be at least 20 times higher. Otherwise, it is almost always better for those large companies to violate the law, reap profits, pay the fine and benefit from their disregard of the law.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoThe maximum fine which could have been imposed was 3.2bn dollars, due to FB's 2020 revenue. This is a first fine, and note that the original article states that both FB and Instagram are under investigation also, so it could easily be 3x this current fine, which is not insignificant, even for Facebook.
- xxs 5y agothis is a GDPR related fine. It will get a lot worse if the noncompliance doesn't get addressed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- piva00 5y agoI agree that the fine needs to be higher to work as a scary deterrent but getting 1% of your profits taken away from a single fine is pretty substantial for any company.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- antonzabirko 5y agoThat's really too little of a fine for them to care. Fines need to discourage the action in the future and at this point the fine is a profit for Facebook.
- anonymousDan 5y agoThe history of the decision making around this is interesting. I didn't realise that data protection agencies in other EU countries could effectively vote on the decisions of the lead agency (in this case Ireland). I feel like that's a nice system. On the one hand straightforward complaints can be handled quickly, but more contentious decisions can be handled collectively without giving companies the ability to shop around for light touch regulation.
- imhoguy 5y agoI just wonder where that money will go.
- jansan 5y agoNot to the victims, that is all I can tell you.
- perlgeek 5y agoIronic that the website hosting the article likely itself violates the GDPR. It makes it much easier to accept all cookies than to reject, without any good technical reason to do so, and presents the "accept all" as the default choice.
- aero-glide2 5y agoI'm not a fan of European bureaucracy but GDPR is one of the best things to happen to modern internet.
- bgorman 5y agoGDPR has effectively added a pointless pop up to every serious webpage. It has made the web experience of almost every single user, measurably worse. Hours of my life have been devoted to accepting cookies since GDPR. Complete waste of human life.
- _hl_ 5y agoThat's exactly the line of reasoning that these privacy invading companies want you to follow. The law doesn't mandate obnoxiously huge popups that slow to a crawl when you try to actually use them to disable cookies and whatnot, quite the contrary. It's the companies who are choosing to make the experience as miserable as possible.
- himinlomax 5y agoThe popups only exist because they don't want to be compliant, or they are ignorant, willfully or not.
- aero-glide2 5y agoThat will be fixed via browser level integration soon.
- sebyx07 5y agoI no longer trust these companies for full e2e encryption, and yesterday I found a realy nice tool(not affiliated) to encrypt yourself the message or file before sending and decrypt those which you receive. Here's the link https://enigma-reloaded.github.io/enigma-reloaded https://enigma-reloaded.github.io/enigma-reloaded
- tralala3 5y agoI discovered this yesterday to encrypt any message and file for any platform https://enigma-reloaded.github.io/enigma-reloaded/#/ https://enigma-reloaded.github.io/enigma-reloaded/#/
- G3rn0ti 5y agoWould be cool if one could opt out of the data collection they do by paying them actual money. In the beginning, WhatsApp charged a couple of dollars a year. I would be willing to pay a couple of ten dollars a year for their service to obtain more privacy from Facebook Inc.