Another Delay For GDPR Crackdown

Ireland’s data protection commissioner Helen Dixon has been poised to lower the boom on Facebook affiliate WhatsApp for a while now, but a procedural complaint by WhatsApp’s lawyers has delayed her decision. Facebook’s international offices are located in Ireland. The widely anticipated penalty could cost the social media company up to 4 percent of global annual revenue, but Fortune quotes Dixon as saying that legitimate queries have been raised about whether the interests of WhatsApp are protected in the process, so a careful response is required. Those concerns have to do with how her office coordinates with other EU data protection authorities, and whether her draft decision includes details about fines and potential changes to WhatsApp’s practices. Early January is now the projected date for publication of the decision. Dixon is currently investigating all the tech giants because they office in Ireland. Her investigators finished their reports on WhatsApp and Twitter in October, triggering the decision-making phase.