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In September of this year, WhatsApp was sentenced to a horrific fine. The reason for this was the violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But the globally successful messenger service does not want to accept this. Now Facebook’s subsidiary has announced legal action against the decision of the data protection authority in Ireland and has already implemented it. The lawsuit has already been filed.
A hefty fine of 225 million euros
In view of the gigantic fine of 225 million euros, one can understand why WhatsApp does not speak well on Irish politics. Since out-of-court steps are obviously no longer the key to success, the messenger now wants to take legal action against the fine. No less a person than the European Court of Justice (ECJ) should now decide on the legality of the fine. But how does it come about that, of all things, Ireland’s authority can issue appropriate penalties for a violation of the GDPR?
The country in northern Europe has been a real tax haven for US companies that want to make big money in Europe for years. Internet companies from the legendary Silicon Valley in particular like to settle in Ireland, not least because of the rather lax tax policy. The same applies to Facebook and thus also to the associated messenger. But as a member of the European Union (EU), it is also up to Ireland to enforce Europe-wide regulations – including the GDPR, which has been in force for a number of years.
Disproportionate sanction?
The Irish regulator did not arrive at its judgment by accident, of course. For a number of years, Facebook has been criticized for being more “relaxed” when it comes to data protection. Nothing else is the case with WhatsApp. In particular, the transparency of further processing and the provision of user data is simply opaque. Here, Facebook in general and WhatsApp in particular must absolutely rethink. The Irish data protection authority also said that WhatsApp urgently needed to revise its data processing. Among other things, the authority will mean the fact that data from European users is stored and processed on servers located in the USA. WhatsApp itself perceives the fine as disproportionately high. In Irish history this is actually astonishingly high. After all, Ireland’s Data Protection Authority has not imposed a higher fine in its history.
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