As a result of dialog rounds among EU consumer protection authorities, Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPC), the instant messaging service WhatsApp committed to being more transparent on changes to its terms of service and confirmed it does not share users' personal data with third-parties or other Meta companies for advertising purposes.
This dialogue was coordinated by the Swedish Consumer Agency and the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission following a complaint made by the European Consumer Organization BEUC on alleged unfair practices regarding WhatsApp's updates to their terms of service and privacy policy.
With respect to future policy updates, WhatsApp agreed to:
- explain what changes it intends to make to the users' contracts and how they could affect their rights;
- include the possibility to reject updated terms of service as prominently as the possibility to accept them;
- ensure that the notifications informing about the updates can be dismissed or the review of the updates can be delayed, as well as respect users' choices and refrain from sending recurring notifications.
The CPC will now actively monitor how WhatsApp implements these commitments when making any future updates to its policies and, where necessary, enforce compliance – including by the possibility of imposing fines.
Ursula Pachl, BEUC Deputy Director General, commented: "WhatsApp bombarded users for months with aggressive and persistent pop-up messages to force them to accept its new terms of use and privacy policy. They told users that their access to their app would be cut off if they did not accept the new terms. Our complaint into the company has now been closed after more than one and a half years but the outcome is disappointing. More transparency and easy options to reject policy changes in the future are simply not enough. This will not offer a remedy to the millions of WhatsApp users who were forced to accept the changes due to the aggressive behavior of the company back in 2021. Unfortunately, with this weak reaction, consumer authorities are sending a very worrying signal accepting that a tech giant like WhatsApp can breach consumer rights and then get away with just a promise to do better in the future. This illustrates the lack of deterrence from the current way to enforce consumer law and the need for an urgent reform to ensure more effective enforcement particularly in cases of EU-wide infringements."
Source: EC & BEUC
More information and BEUC press release