Two fines in a few days for Meta. After receiving a heavy penalty (390 million euros) at the beginning of the month, the parent company of Facebook must pay the Irish regulator 5.5 million euros. His wrong? Having violated the European Data Regulation (GDPR) with his WhatsApp messaging.
In this new decision, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the EU, considers that the digital giant has not respected its “transparency obligations”.
Meta relied on an erroneous legal basis “for its processing of personal data for the purpose of improving the service and security”, continues in a press release the regulator, which gives six months to the Californian group to “put its data processing operations data in compliance”.
A fine that does not relate to targeted advertising
This sanction is based on grounds similar to that announced in early January which targeted the social networks Facebook and Instagram. But the previous decision also accused these Meta subsidiaries of failures related to the processing of personal data for targeted advertising purposes, a decision likely to inflict a blow to the group’s advertising revenues.
Meta, however, immediately announced its intention to appeal and was quick to add that the penalty did not prevent targeted or personalized advertising.
The fine is much lower this time, in particular because it does not relate to targeted advertising, but also because “the DPC had already imposed a very substantial fine of 225 million euros on WhatsApp” for facts which related “to the same period”, she argues. The regulator had in fact imposed a heavy penalty on
WhatsApp in September 2021 for having failed in its transparency obligations, in particular on data transfers to other companies in the group.