Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting German WhatsApp Data
- Hamburg regulator issues a three-month emergency order
- Watchdog calls new terms intransparent and overly broad
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Facebook Inc. was ordered to stop collecting German users’ data from its WhatsApp unit, after a regulator in the nation said the company’s attempt to make users agree to the practice in its updated terms isn’t legal.
Johannes Caspar, who heads Hamburg’s privacy authority, issued a three-month emergency ban, prohibiting Facebook from continuing with the data collection. He also asked a panel of European Union data regulators to take action and issue a ruling across the 27-nation bloc. The new WhatsApp terms enabling the data scoop are invalid because they are intransparent, inconsistent and overly broad, he said.