Ireland's data protection agency today announced a € 225 million fine against its WhatsApp Facebook for non-compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation Unions (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 Commission (DPC), WhatsApp was fined for not properly informing users how their WhatsApp data is being used by Facebook, the mother application 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.