ICO investigating into Facebook and WhatsApp Data Sharing Plans; Germany and France publish joint action plan against encryption; PrivacyShield now covering 200 U.S. companies.

UK DPA investigating into Facebook and WhatsApp Data Sharing Plans

The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner (‘ICO’) is taking a closer look into WhatsApp’s plan to share more user data with parent company Facebook for the purposes of targeted advertising.

According to a recent WhatsApp blog post, WhatsApp has changed its Privacy Policy on August 25. This move will allow the company to share further personal information, in particular the mobile phone numbers of its users, with parent company Facebook. According to information published earlier this week, users should have 30 days to decide whether they want to receive targeted advertising, but they should not be allowed to object the data sharing as such.

Actually, the new approach of WhatsApp is not such a big surprise, as similar concerns had already been raised in the debate around the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook. However, the European Commission had explicitly made clear that the assessment of privacy issues does not fall within its competence as a Competition authority, and approved the merger.Continue Reading Privacy & Cybersecurity Weekly News Update – Week of August 21