Facebook Told To Stop Taking Data From German WhatsApp Users (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @02:10AM from the privacy-woes dept.

An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Facebook, already under scrutiny in the U.S. and the European Union for revisions to privacy policies for its WhatsApp messaging service, was ordered by Hamburg's privacy watchdog to stop processing data of German users of the chat service. In a renewed clash with the social-network operator, Johannes Caspar, one of Germany's most outspoken data protection commissioners, ordered Facebook to delete any data it already has. The news comes as EU privacy regulators, who previously expressed concerns about the policy shift, meet in Brussels to discuss their position. There's no legal basis for Facebook to use information of WhatsApp customers, Caspar said Tuesday. "This order protects the data of about 35 million WhatsApp users in Germany," Caspar said. "It has to be their decision as to whether they want to connect their account with Facebook. Therefore, Facebook has to ask for their permission in advance. This has not happened."

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Facebook by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 03:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, all have one thing in common. Their existence is based on extracting information from you. I'm really starting to distance myself. The Internet isn't interesting like it used to be. It seems very monopolized with a herd-like mentality. People seem to have become a product for the Internet, rather than the Internet being a product for the people.