Italy's Antitrust Body Fines WhatsApp for $3.2Mln Over Customer Code Violations

ROME (Sputnik) — The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) imposed a 3-million-euro ($3.2 million) fine on WhatsApp messaging service for allegedly forcing its users to share their personal data with its parent company Facebook, the agency said in a statement Friday.

On Thursday, the ICA concluded two investigations, launched in October 2016, into alleged infringements by WhatsApp,

"In the first investigation, the ICA has ascertained that WhatsApp Inc. de facto forced the users of its service WhatsApp Messanger to accept in full the new Terms of Use, and specifically the provision to share their personal data with Facebook, by inducing them to believe that without granting such consent they would not have been able to use the service anymore," the statement read.

The agency said the second investigation concerned the alleged "unfair nature" of some contractual closes in the messenger's "Terms of Use," which were assessed as illegal. They include, among other issues, wide exclusions and limitations of responsibility in favor of WhatsApp and the possibility to interrupt the service unilaterally without prior notice.

WhatsApp, used by around one billion people, has been at the center of a privacy controversy since being acquired by Facebook in 2014. The social network at first pledged not to interfere with the existing privacy rules and to minimize the number of advertisements, but privacy policy changes came about in 2016, allowing more data sharing between the two platforms. The data sharing was halted after the European Union charged Facebook with providing misleading information on its merger with WhatsApp.