Whatsapp, Codacons denounces the company to the Privacy Guarantor: why

Codacons denounced Whastapp to the Privacy Guarantor, asking the authority “to inhibit behavior that violates users’ rights and to order the company to comply with European provisions on privacy”. At the heart of the association’s complaint, the impossibility of deactivating the chat backup function from the WhatsApp application in smartphones with the Android operating system. “As is known, WhatsApp, by default, saves chats locally on the device memory or on the SD card inserted in the Android smartphone, and / or on Google Drive -explains the association- It is also known that the data being backed up, to date, they would not be encrypted. However, when you try to disable the ‘backup on Google Drive’ function, setting the value to ‘never’, the procedure continues to start, causing great inconvenience to users who use the app, especially if these have numerous files in memory “.” Even when you disable the ‘WhatsApp on Google Drive’ application and even uninstall the application and reinstall it, the problem keeps recurring “, continues Codacons. To an access request presented by the association, the company replied that effectively “users can perform additional local backups on their device, but they cannot disable Backup Standard”, and this, reports the consumer movement, “in order not to better specified information security needs of users who are often completely unaware of this procedure of automatic copying of their chats “. This situation” means that the user’s will not to save data is not respected, in violation of the general principles on the processing of personal data: data processing is essentially carried out without the consent of the interested party, for purposes not intended by the user and beyond the time necessary with respect to the purposes of the same “, attacks the Codacons. A risk, according to the association, “enormous potential for consumers, since the owners of the smartphone where the mandatory data backup is activated are exposed, against their will, to a possible risk of data breach”. For these reasons, Codacons has started a legal battle against WhatsApp, asking the Privacy Guarantor to open a proceeding and order the company, as owner of the processing of users’ personal data, to satisfy the requests to exercise the rights referred to in Articles. from 15 to 22 of the Gdpr – General Data Protection Regulation, “to conform processing to the provisions in force on the subject and to impose a temporary or definitive limitation to processing, including the prohibition of processing”. In the absence of interventions to protect user privacy, Codacons is ready to bring a mega class action against WhatsApp on behalf of millions of Italians who have downloaded the app on their mobile phones.