ANKARA -- Turkey has
joined a host of other countries in fining Facebook's ubiquitous WhatsApp
messaging service for failing to sufficiently protect user data.
اضافة اعلان
The 200,000 euro penalty was imposed after months of
confusion over whether WhatsApp had introduced its controversial new data
sharing rules in Turkey.
WhatsApp unrolled a policy change earlier this year that
allowed it to collect more personal data -- including phone numbers and
location -- for everyone who agreed with its new terms of service.
It offered users no other option besides dropping the
service outright.
It then delayed imposing the change in Turkey after
President Erdogan's media office moved its communications to a local equivalent
to WhatsApp called BiP.
Erdogan's government and
WhatsApp have since issued
contradictory statements about whether the new data rules had been applied in
Turkey.
Turkey's Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK) said it
was fining WhatsApp because it no longer offered users "free will".
"Persons are forced to give consent to the contract as
a whole, thereby trying to exclude express consent," the ruling said.
The decision came one day after Ireland -- which houses the
European headquarters of Facebook -- fined WhatsApp 225 million euros for
similar data offences.
Moscow fined the two services and Twitter in August for
failing to store data of Russian users on local servers.
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