The European consumer organisation (Beuc) announced on Monday that it had filed a complaint with the European Commission against the messaging service WhatsApp over the controversial change to its privacy policy.
These new rules are “neither transparent nor understandable for users”, estimate the Beuc and eight of its member organizations, including the UFC-Que Choisir (France), accusing WhatsApp of “multiple violations of the rights of European consumers”.
These organizations have lodged a complaint with the European Commission and the European network of consumer protection authorities.
The associations APC (Romania), Consumentenbond (Netherlands), dTest (Czech Republic), Forbrukerrådet (Norway), KEPKA (Greece), EKPIZO (Greece), SOS Poprad (Slovakia) or even UFC-Que Choisir (France) ) have decided to take the courier to court.
In front of the European Commission, they also criticize Whatsapp for the opacity of the new TOS. “It is impossible for consumers to fully understand the consequences of the changes for their privacy, in particular concerning the transfer of their personal data to Facebook and to other third parties”
It should mentionned that ,WhatsApp, Facebook’s messaging service, informed its 2 billion users earlier this year that they had to agree to new terms of service.
The company then postponed to May 15 the implementation of these new rules .
Several countries, including Germany, have temporarily banned Facebook from using WhatsApp data
