EU Issues Data-Protection Warning to WhatsApp, Yahoo
October 28 2016 - 6:20AM
Dow Jones News
BRUSSELS—European privacy regulators on Friday fired a warning
shot to Facebook Inc.'s WhatsApp and Yahoo Inc., saying they sent
letters to the companies expressing concerns about possible
violations of the bloc's data-protection rules.
A European Union body representing national data-protection
authorities from the bloc's 28 states said it sent WhatsApp a
letter expressing "serious concerns" about the messaging service's
new terms that allow it to share user information including phone
numbers with its parent, Facebook. The regulators urged the company
to pause the data sharing until "legal protections" could be
assured.
In a letter to Yahoo, the regulators outlined concerns about a
2014 data breach the company announced in September, as well as
allegations that the company built a system that scanned customers'
incoming emails at the request of U.S. intelligence services, the
body said. Yahoo has denied such a system exists.
The regulators said they demanded more information from the
companies on the issues, in a first step that could lead to
national data-protection authorities to open up their own probes
and eventually fine the companies if they find they violated the
bloc's privacy rules.
A German privacy watchdog has already demanded that Facebook
stop collecting WhatsApp user data—an order Facebook said it would
appeal.
In response to the EU privacy regulators' move, a WhatsApp
spokeswoman said: "We're working with data protection authorities
to address their questions." She added that the company reached out
to the regulators for feedback before the policy change. A Yahoo
spokesperson wasn't immediately reached for comment.
For Facebook, which has also come under fire for the new terms
from U.S. consumer privacy advocates groups, the pushback from
European regulators opens a new front in Facebook's privacy
battles.
Germany's Federal Cartel Office earlier this year said it was
investigating whether Facebook abuses its dominance as a social
network to harvest personal information. France's privacy watchdog
has threatened to fine Facebook if it doesn't change how it handles
data about its users.
Facebook has said it is confident it complies with European
data-protection law.
The EU privacy authorities on Friday said that because
WhatsApp's policy change includes conditions that didn't exist when
current users signed up, that raises concerns about the validity of
the user's consent as well as the rights of non-WhatsApp users.
For Yahoo, the regulators noted that "a great number of EU
accounts" were stolen when hackers penetrated Yahoo's network in
late 2014 and stole personal data on more than 500 million
users.
The company should notify concerned users about the possible
consequences and "cooperate with all upcoming national data
protection authority's inquiries and/or investigations," the body
said.
Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 28, 2016 06:05 ET (10:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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