WhatsApp is issued the second-largest GDPR fine in EU: €225m

[grg994]

Summary

WhatsApp has been fined €225m (£193m) by Ireland's data watchdog for breaching privacy regulations.

 

Quotes

Quote

It is the largest fine ever from the Irish Data Protection Commission, and the second-highest under EU GDPR rules.

[...]

The fine relates to an investigation which began in 2018, about whether WhatsApp had been transparent enough about how it handles information.

The issues involved were highly technical, including whether WhatsApp supplied enough information to users about how their data was processed and if its privacy policies were clear enough.

Those policies have since been updated several times.

 

My thoughts

Ehh, just low effort informational post... Anyway this is further justifies that all of you should have switched to Telegram or Signal with your friends since the Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp if you care about privacy

 

Sources

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58422465

[ARikozuM]

Just once: I wish privacy and EULA policies were written in plain English. 

[Levent]

Only €225M? With how well targeted ads are getting in instagram I am pretty sure they are still making big money.

[lewdicrous]

24 minutes ago, grg994 said:

Anyway this is further justifies that all of you should have switched to Telegram or Signal with your friends since the Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp if you care about privacy

It's harder to switch when everyone you know, and don't know, uses it. Especially when it's been used since before it was acquired.

Want something delivered? Send your location on WhatsApp.

Want to form a group for a project? Do it on WhatsApp.

want to catch up with your friends? Do it on WhatsApp.

 

The thing is, most (ordinary) people don't care about privacy to a certain degree. WhatsApp provides comfort at the expense of privacy and people would trade their privacy (to a point) in the hopes of being comfortable.

[HanZie82]

1 minute ago, lewdicrous said:

It's harder to switch when everyone you know, and don't know, uses it. Especially when it's been used since before it was acquired.

Want something delivered? Send your location on WhatsApp.

Want to form a group for a project? Do it on WhatsApp.

want to catch up with your friends? Do it on WhatsApp.

 

The thing is, most (ordinary) people don't care about privacy to a certain degree. WhatsApp provides comfort at the expense of privacy and people would trade their privacy (to a point) in the hopes of being comfortable.

If poeple dont care about the lack of privacy they dont care about installing yet another app.
When i stopped using Whatsapp And told everyone to contact me via SMS or Telegram, most of them installed TG.

(and then come complain about the lack of features in Whatsapp hahahaha)

[12345678]

2 hours ago, grg994 said:

 you should have switched to Telegram 

I guess you haven't ever read telegram's policies

 

telegram is not really that better

[WolframaticAlpha]

15 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

If poeple dont care about the lack of privacy they dont care about installing yet another app.
When i stopped using Whatsapp And told everyone to contact me via SMS or Telegram, most of them installed TG.

(and then come complain about the lack of features in Whatsapp hahahaha)

Unlike a mobile phone, switching out of a messaging ecosystem is very difficult. One of the main reasons for getting an iphone is imessage. People bought blackberries for BBM.

 

That just shows the amount of stickiness generated by a messenger.

 

 A lot of people will be willing to switch(heck I had daily updates each day about people joining TG), but the problem comes with the minority who remains stuck. And using a single inbox is very appealing. I use a service called Franz, because of it's integrated nature.

 

I use TG, but cannot fully switch to it. WhatsApp had the first movers benefit, which is essential in a messaging space.

 

13 hours ago, 12345678 said:

I guess you haven't ever read telegram's policies

 

telegram is not really that better

It is significantly better than whatsapps. Unlike WhatsApp, the TG clients are OSS, and are not running background services to sell data to the Durovs. Unlike the name, TG is actually british and not russian.

 

Telegram also has better features and is more fully fledged. 

 

Most publications will write about TG not using E2E. You can enable it, and by default all the traffic is being conducted thru a secure tunnel. Signal is better in this regard, but TG is not that behind privacy-wise. 

[HanZie82]

4 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Most publications will write about TG not using E2E. You can enable it, and by default all the traffic is being conducted thru a secure tunnel. Signal is better in this regard, but TG is not that behind privacy-wise. 

Well What Signal does has been built in Telegram for years..

If you don't want to use that that's one's own choice.

(Not many do, but the secure chat function in Telegram is better then others. Mostly because of the extra's it comes with.)

 

But lets be honest with technology today, its still only a mediocre solution to something that should've been way more integrated by now.

Thats the fun of capitalism, holding back development.

[DeScruff]

On 9/2/2021 at 1:31 PM, Levent said:

Only €225M? With how well targeted ads are getting in instagram I am pretty sure they are still making big money.

The joke of it all is at some point these fines are just viewed as just a cost of doing business.
Once you are big enough breaking the law and paying a fine still earns you more then whatever you would make if you actually complied.
*Insert some corporate shill / lobbyist making comments on how increasing the fine for breaking the law to properly reflect the amount of money a company made via breaking the law would hurt 'small business' or that being held accountable for breaking the law is a bad thing.*

 

$225M feels like nothing, specially since Im seeing a revenue of 5 billion being floated around? - granted that is globally who knows what it is in just the EU.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, DeScruff said:

The joke of it all is at some point these fines are just viewed as just a cost of doing business.
Once you are big enough breaking the law and paying a fine still earns you more then whatever you would make if you actually complied.
*Insert some corporate shill / lobbyist making comments on how increasing the fine for breaking the law to properly reflect the amount of money a company made via breaking the law would hurt 'small business' or that being held accountable for breaking the law is a bad thing.*

 

$225M feels like nothing, specially since Im seeing a revenue of 5 billion being floated around? - granted that is globally who knows what it is in just the EU.

You think it would be easy to just have the fine be equivalent to the money they made breaking the rule or somewhere close so that they realize that there is no incentive to break the law to begin with. Then even if it happens to small businesses it will only be an amount that is what they wouldn't have made had they broke the law to begin with making it totally fair. 

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

You think it would be easy to just have the fine be equivalent to the money they made breaking the rule or somewhere close so that they realize that there is no incentive to break the law to begin with. Then even if it happens to small businesses it will only be an amount that is what they wouldn't have made had they broke the law to begin with making it totally fair. 

It’s probably not a straightforward matter to assess the monetary gains made from such violations, especially if the crime was done in anticipation of future gains or opportunities rather than making immediate profits that could be disgorged. 
 

How would a justice system accurately disgorge ill-gotten profits if said gains are undefined and don’t yet exist (thus won’t be recorded or documented)?

[poochyena]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:52 AM, lewdicrous said:

It's harder to switch when everyone you know, and don't know, uses it. Especially when it's been used since before it was acquired.

Want something delivered? Send your location on WhatsApp.

Want to form a group for a project? Do it on WhatsApp.

want to catch up with your friends? Do it on WhatsApp.

 

The thing is, most (ordinary) people don't care about privacy to a certain degree. WhatsApp provides comfort at the expense of privacy and people would trade their privacy (to a point) in the hopes of being comfortable.

I just do all that on discord. I never used whatsapp.

 

4 hours ago, DeScruff said:

revenue of 5 billion

revenue alone means nothing. I could sell a 100 dollar bill for $90 and have $90 revenue. Net profits are what keep companies alive.
200m is a lot of money

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

It’s probably not a straightforward matter to assess the monetary gains made from such violations, especially if the crime was done in anticipation of future gains or opportunities rather than making immediate profits that could be disgorged. 
 

How would a justice system accurately disgorge ill-gotten profits if said gains are undefined and don’t yet exist (thus won’t be recorded or documented)?

They can't get info on how much they made off of info they sold that they shouldn't have had? Maybe it is more complicated then I think but surely they could come up with a way to make a rough estimate.