WhatsApp Violates Canadian And Dutch Data and Privacy Laws
According to the Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities, the world wide popular cross platform mobile messenger WhatsApp application is said to be violating the international privacy laws.This is because the application requires the users to provide their whole contact list to the service.This was announced today by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Dutch Data Protection Authority which they called as a "collaborative investigation into the handling of personal information" .WhatsApp is known to be a free service which allow users to send text messages while connecting on the internet.More than one billion messages are sent by the users everyday.
Jacob Johnstamm,the chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority said that:
"The investigation revealed that users of WhatsApp -- apart from iPhone users who have iOS 6 software -- do not have a choice to use the app without granting access to their entire address book. The address book contains phone numbers of both users and non-users,"
WhatsApp uses the contact list of each user to identify whether these numbers are using the application,but instead of deleting the non-users number,WhatsApp keeps the number in an unreadable form.This contravene both the Canadian and Dutch privacy law, which states that personal data can be kept only as long as it is needed for the fulfullment of certain services.
Jacob Johnstamm added: "Both users and non-users should have control over their personal data and users must be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with WhatsApp,"
More can be read from the official statement [Click Here!]
Jacob Johnstamm,the chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority said that:
"The investigation revealed that users of WhatsApp -- apart from iPhone users who have iOS 6 software -- do not have a choice to use the app without granting access to their entire address book. The address book contains phone numbers of both users and non-users,"
WhatsApp uses the contact list of each user to identify whether these numbers are using the application,but instead of deleting the non-users number,WhatsApp keeps the number in an unreadable form.This contravene both the Canadian and Dutch privacy law, which states that personal data can be kept only as long as it is needed for the fulfullment of certain services.
Jacob Johnstamm added: "Both users and non-users should have control over their personal data and users must be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with WhatsApp,"
More can be read from the official statement [Click Here!]