France against Facebook. The company was accused of violating the law on data protection

On December 18, the National Commission on Information Technologies and Freedom of France (CNIL) accused Facebook of illegal data exchange with the WhatsApp messenger. The regulator believes that the collection of “business analytics” leads to a violation of the French data protection law. The Cnil decision is a new turn in the conflict of social networks and the European authorities.

The collection of "business analytics" reveals user data. Cnil believes that WhatsApp transfers Facebook to the user phone number and illegally study the user habits on the social network.

WhatsApp and Facebook should eliminate violations in a month. If the companies continue not to fulfill French laws, Cnil will launch an investigation against the messenger and impose sanctions.

The conflict began in 2016. WhatsApp warned users that now the program will share user data with Facebook. This happened despite the promises of social networks not to compromise the confidential information of the messenger users. In 2014, when Facebook bought WhatsApp for $ 16 billion, European regulators approved the deal and did not find reasons for violating competition.

In May 2017, the European Union fined Facebook at € 110 million. The reason is to provide knowingly false information about the terms of the purchase of WhatsApp. The special commission then said that, buying a messenger, representatives of Facebook argued that the company did not have the opportunity to combine data from users of the social network and the messenger. The European Commission is sure that the leadership of the social networks knew that technically the combination of data was possible, but it was silent about it.

Facebook fight not only in France. In September 2017, the Spanish data protection agency fined Facebook at € 1.2 million for violation of the law on the protection of personal data. The regulator has identified three cases of violation of the law. According to the Spanish side, Facebook did not notify users about how the information collected about them will be used (about worldview, field, religion, personal interests and behavior on the social network).

Prior to this, similar measures against WhatsApp were taken in Italy. In May 2017, the country's antimonopoly regulator wrote out a fine for a messenger for € 3 million. Then it turned out that users forced to accept the new service rules, which implied the disclosure of personal data for the Facebook social network.