WhatsApp will not share data with Facebook until it can comply with privacy regulation

WhatsApp has agreed with the British privacy watchdog that it will not share data of EU citizens with parent company Facebook until the General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect in May and until it complies with its rules.

The British ICO, or the Information Commissioner’s Office, writes that WhatsApp has signed a document in which these agreements are recorded. It states that the obligation not to share extends to all users in the EU. The transfer of data is also prohibited ‘for any purpose’ and may only be resumed if the privacy regulation, also known as GDPR, is in force and WhatsApp can comply with those rules. The British privacy regulator was appointed in October last year as the leader of a task force, which aims to solve the problems surrounding data sharing.

The regulator writes that its investigation started in 2016. In the summer of that year, WhatsApp announced that it would share data with its parent company. The ICO has shared the results of the investigation with WhatsApp in a letter and is also publishing them in the current announcement. For example, the organization argues that there is no lawful basis for sharing personal data, WhatsApp did not sufficiently inform users and the sharing is contrary to the original purpose of collection. However, WhatsApp would not have shared any data so far.

WhatsApp said at the end of 2016 that it would temporarily not share data with Facebook, after the Article 29 working group first requested it. All EU privacy supervisors are united in this working group. In October of last year, the working group said that the data transfer could not take place yet. Subsequently, the French regulator WhatsApp issued an ultimatum to allow its data transfers with Facebook to proceed according to the law. That has now expired, but the regulator has not yet announced any next steps.