French Privacy Agency to Block WhatsApp Facebook Data Transfers
France's data protection authority CNIL has given WhatsApp one month to stop sending user data to Facebook. EPIC and the Center for Digital Democracy urged the FTC in 2014 to mandate privacy safeguards for Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp, and warned the FTC in 2016 that WhatsApp was sending user data to Facebook, violating privacy commitments. In May, Facebook was fined $122 million for misleading the European Commission during an investigation into the Facebook-WhatsApp merger, and in October, European privacy experts warned that WhatsApp was still not complying with EU data protection law.