Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

Re:Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp User... by rmc on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @08:12AM (#12588959)

One aspect of European data protection is "freely given, informed consent". You can only do what the user has consented to. If a company loudly says "We'll never share it" and the ToS says "We can share it", then what has the user consented to? You could make a case that the user is consenting the loud proclamations. EU data protection law doesn't allow dense legalise behind a click-through as "consent".

So maybe EU law is already doing what you say it should do. :)

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Re:Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp User... by pluma on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @09:30AM (#12589418)

German law basically says that terms of service and end user license agreements can't contain surprises. If a service explicitly states it doesn't do certain things, the user hasn't consented to the service doing those things, even if the ToS or EULA contain a snippet in fine print saying the service may actually do these things after all.

This already bit WhatsApp when they tried to ban users for using alternative clients. A German court ruled while they may block those alternative clients, banning the user is unexpected because most other services don't have that kind of policy on alternative clients.

So they could have still kept that policy but they would have to make it unambiguously clear and draw attention to it outside the ToS or EULA because it's something users wouldn't expect from that kind of service.

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Re:Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp User... by codingmyway on Wednesday September 28, 2016 @07:56AM (#12596968)

The EU is way ahead in protecting consumers. Thankfully I am an EU citizen (for now, #Brexit) but unless other major economies follow corporations will keep trying.

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