Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said on Thursday that it had fined WhatsApp 225 million euros ($266.7 million) after it failed to comply with regulation on the transparency of data processing.
The Irish regulator has been investigating the messenger since December 2018 to establish whether the app has fulfilled its transparency obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). WhatsApp’s service is obliged to provide information and ensure the transparency of that information to both users and non-users.
“[Upon concluding the probe,] the DPC has imposed a fine of €225 million on WhatsApp,” the regulator said in a statement, noting that the fine was increased from what was the initially proposed at the request of the European Data Protection Board in July.
In addition to an administrative fine, the Irish regulator has also imposed a reprimand and ordered WhatsApp to bring its data processing into compliance with the GDPR, the statement read.
