Ireland's data protection service today announced a € 225 million fine against Facebook's WhatsApp for failing to comply with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The fine is the second largest for the GDPR after Amazon was fined 746 million euros by Luxembourg at the end of July.
According to the Irish Data Protection Committee (DPC), WhatsApp was fined for failing to properly inform users how their WhatsApp data is being used by Facebook, the app's parent company.
The investigation into the GDPR violations by the WhatsApp application started in December 2018 in Ireland, where the European headquarters of Facebook are located.
Following an initial investigation, Irish officials wanted to impose a € 50 million fine on WhatsApp, but the original fine was vetoed by other data protection bodies belonging to the European Data Protection Council (EDPB), which effectively forced the Irish regulator to again the violations of the GDPR, resulting in the largest fine announced today.
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
