The Italian Competition Authority announced on Friday it was launching two new investigations into the privacy practices of Facebook-owned WhatsApp, saying it would look into whether users had been “de facto forced” to accept new terms and conditions applicable to personal data sharing.
The consumer agency said in a release that the application could have led users to believe they were required to accept new terms of service granting the application consent to share their data with Facebook, “allegedly making them believe, through a message made visible when opening the application, that it would have been otherwise impossible to continue using it.”
The agency said it was also investigating “the possible oppressive nature of some contractual clauses … concerning, in particular, the right granted to the company to unilaterally change contractual provisions,” as well as the choice of jurisdiction during disputes, currently set exclusively in the United States.
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WhatsApp, initially established as an encrypted messaging platform that allowed users to communicate over a secure channel, was purchased by Facebook in 2014. The company has come under fire on several occasions for weakening privacy features in order to collect and share personal data with Facebook.
The synchronization has allowed the website to harvest information from WhatsApp users, including information on their personal contacts, and combine it with data taken from users through their Facebook profiles for marketing purposes, even when the two services are not installed on the same device.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Facebook insisted WhatsApp’s core privacy features remain intact. “Each app has its own privacy policy and terms of service,” a spokesman for the company said. “There are important differences based on how each app works. … WhatsApp does not store messages, nor can it access the content of messages due to end-to-end encryption.”
