How did it end, the tug-of-war between us and WhatsApp on new terms of use, in force since last May 15th? It ended up with the representatives of Buec, the largest and most important of the organizations representing European consumers (the acronym comes from the French Bureau européen des Unions de consommateurs), who have decided to bring the American company to court because it allegedly put “continuous and undue pressure on users to accept new privacy terms that are neither understandable nor transparent”.
The complaint was submitted to the European Commission and to the European network of consumer authorities: “For months, WhatsApp has been exerting undue pressure on its users to accept the new terms of use – a note from Beuc reads – yet these terms remain vague, they are neither transparent nor understandable “.
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The complaint is due to the contents and timing of the notifications, “persistent, recurring and intrusive”, which would push to accept the updates of the terms of use of WhatsApp. It is, continues Beuc, “undue pressure”, which “undermines the freedom of choice” and “constitutes a violation of the EU Directive on unfair commercial practices”. For Beuc, WhatsApp “failed to explain in simple and understandable language the nature of the changes “, so much so that” it is practically impossible for consumers to have a clear understanding of the consequences that WhatsApp changes entail for their privacy, in particular in relation to the transfer of their personal data to Facebook and other third parties ” .
This ambiguity is “a violation of EU consumer law, which obliges companies to use contractual conditions and clear and transparent commercial communications“, Beuc accuses. The organization then recalls that since May 2021 the privacy policy of the popular app has been under scrutiny by the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, who has issued an ordinance banning Facebook from process WhatsApp personal data in Germany, in application of the urgency procedure of General Data Protection Regulation (the so-called GDPR).
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