Ireland's data protection agency today announced a €225m fine against Facebook's WhatsApp for failing to comply with its General Data Protection Regulation Europeanof the Union (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 used by Facebook, the app's parent company.
Η research into GDPR violations by the WhatsApp app began in December 2018 in Ireland, where Facebook's European headquarters 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.
