That's rarely the case in the EU, though.
Fines are never directly going back to the prosecuting body in the EU and damages are strictly limited to compensatory. Fines just go back to the general budget. I think that's why the EU is generally a lot less litigious than the USA.
The official ToS themselves actually don't contain any information about their data collection, it's basically just a link to their privacy guidelines. Those privacy guidelines, in summary, just say "we collect information about how you use WhatsApp so we can improve our services". No word about what information they collect exactly, in what ways it is processed and linked with other data, what kind of meta-information they extract from it, nothing.
The GDPR is only vague for organisations that go as close to the edge of legality as possible.
https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy
> Information We Collect
> WhatsApp must receive or collect some information to operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services, including when you install, access, or use our Services... The types of information we receive and collect depend on how you use our Services...
> Our Services have optional features which, if used by you, require us to collect additional information to provide such features. You will be notified of such collection, as appropriate...
> Information You Provide
> Your Account Information... Your Messages... Media Forwarding... Your connections... Status Information... Transactions and Payments Data
> Automatically Collected Information: Usage And Log Information... Device And Connection Information... Location Information...Cookies.
Even if it was security, which it isnt, they would still have to 'invest money' to comply post being sued. So they save the invesment, get sued for 255mil and have to spend the money anyway.
I find it unlikely that when they skimped on the t's and c's writing they 'saved' themselves 255milion in lawyer time? Whats that, say 51,000 lawyer hours billing out at 5k an hour? So 100 high priced lawyers billing 100 hours a week for an entire year to write the t's and c's?
https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/binding-...
Facebook should have done the right thing from the start. The conditons were clear.
> The regulator has also ordered the messaging service to bring its processing into compliance by taking a range of specified remedial actions.
Now users also have to spend tax money on litigation. Fines need to be harder.
I don't get the point of this. Should Facebook not set aside an amount for likely litigation? The fact is that these regulations are very vague and regulatory authorities have a lot of discretion. Notice that the article simply says Whats app failed to provide "transparency of information provided to users about the processing of their data between WhatsApp and other Facebook companies." Imagine being in a company and your task is to prevent this sort of thing. What does this mean? I'm sure its in the disclaimer, terms of service and a number of other places. But it's not enough apparently.
And there's a huge financial incentive for these bodies to go after large companies. In the US a lot of the fine goes back to the prosecuting body.
For instance, in 2013 JP Morgan paid a $13 billion settlements, $7bn of which was distributed to various government authorities, including the prosecuting agencies.
https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/where-does-jpmorgans...