Following pressure from the European Union’s privacy agency, Ireland’s data protection regulator on Thursday fined WhatsApp, a mobile app owned by Facebook.
An Irish government agency has fined WhatsApp 225 million euros (226 million dollars).
The decision by the regulator states that WhatsApp shared users’ information with Facebook without informing them, even though the data was not protected.
According to the decision, WhatsApp officials could not convince the Irish Privacy Commissioner of violating the law and could not explain.
According to the report, after two years of investigation, the Irish authorities imposed a fine on WhatsApp, considered the biggest fine in the data protection law. Regulators had recommended a fine of 50 million euros, but the agency imposed four times the fine.
On the other hand, while announcing the appeal against the decision, the WhatsApp management said that:
“the decision made by the authority is not appropriate, we take care of the privacy of the users in every case.”
It should be noted that the Irish Authority has more than two dozen cases of major technology companies under investigation.
