I presume that is enough to make her an identified natural person or, at the least, an identifiable natural person, pursuant to Art. It includes her first and last name, her mobile phone number, her landline number, and her email address. I don’t think there is any doubt that the information I have recorded about my boss on my phone is personal data. Does the information it processes constitute ‘personal data’? I’m not prepared to conclude on points of fact in this article, but there is quite obviously a chance WhatsApp is 'processing' the contact information supplied to it by its users. If WhatsApp didn’t perform these technical operations, it wouldn’t be able to determine which contacts to display to me within the app (i.e., those contacts who are on WhatsApp) and which contacts to not display to me within the app (i.e., those contacts who aren’t on WhatsApp). Organise and structure the information so a reconciliation can be done to work out which of my contacts already have a WhatsApp account and which don’t. However, my presumption is the service must, at the very least, do the following with it:Ĭollect and record all phone contact information onto its servers (its popup admits to doing this) and, Ultimately, if WhatsApp were to be pursued in litigation, a deeper investigation would need to be done into what the service actually does with my phone’s contact information.
Would the app’s processing of this personal data comply with the GDPR regulations?ĭoes WhatsApp process my boss’s information? I’m also sharing the personal data of contacts, like my boss, who have no pre-existing relationship with it, and who unwittingly give information about themselves to the app.ĭoes WhatsApp ‘process’ the information belonging to my boss when I connect my address book to its service?ĭoes the information it processes contain and constitute ‘personal data’? When I hit "OK" and allow WhatsApp to upload my phone’s contacts to its servers I’m not just re-sharing with them the details of people who already have a relationship with WhatsApp. Or, as WhatsApp puts it, to help you "quickly get in touch with your friends". The app wants this consent so it can scan through your contacts, determine which of them have a WhatsApp account, and add those who do to your list of WhatsApp contacts within the app. It specifically asks you to give consent for WhatsApp to upload all your phone contacts to its servers.
When you first download and open WhatsApp, you encounter this popup: Unlike my boss, I am a WhatsApp user who’s connected my address book to the service via the app. She is, however, a contact in my iPhone, and I have added the following information to her profile: first name, last name, mobile phone number, home phone number, and, email address. She has no notion of what it is and has never agreed to enter a contract with WhatsApp to supply its service to her. I’ll run through two scenarios to elucidate the issue: (1) My boss and, (2) My consulting client. The most glaring incidences of WhatsApp’s ostensible non-compliance with the GDPR centre on whether relevant "data subjects" have given proper consent for the app to process their data. But is WhatsApp compliant with the GDPR? Consent issues for WhatsApp Businesses are increasingly using WhatsApp for both employee and customer communications. Companies are still adjusting to its implications. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force earlier this year, on May 25.