(by Claudio Nassisi, Chartered Accountant and Phd in Economics and Aidr partner) With a message sent to over 2 billion users, WhatsApp has communicated the update of its terms and the information on its privacy policy.
The warning had a significant and perhaps unexpected impact, so much so that a massive exodus to other messaging applications began. First of all Signal and Telegram (the latter in January alone had an increase of 90 million subscribers).
Given the dangerous trend, the deadline was promptly moved from February 8 to May 15, 2021.
To understand the real need behind this initiative, it is good to point out that in February 2014 Facebook acquired WhatsApp with the intention of exploiting its enormous potential and making every user gravitate within their companies.
Each of us has questioned at least once about the use made of their personal data and about the subjects who actually have access to it. Another more than legitimate doubt is whether our personal data have an economic value for their use by third parties.
Considering that advertising revenue in the United States was approximately $ 2017 billion for 83 million active users in 287, the average user annual “market value” for commercial operators was $ 300.
In essence, leaving out here the question of the prices requested on the dark web to purchase information illegally collected through deception techniques, it is undisputed to argue that personal information has a clear economic value, so much so that it becomes the object of specific activities by some specialized operators. : data brokers. These subjects buy personal information, or collect it from various channels, analyze it to resell it as any raw material to be reused.
European citizens can consider themselves protected by the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of 2018, or the EU Regulation 2016/679 concerning the protection of individuals with regard to the processing and free circulation of personal data.
Outside the perimeter of the European Union, the message that WhatsApp sent to its subscribers concerns the sharing of data for the purpose of greater personalization of advertisements (proposed from time to time in an almost "tailored" manner).
It is therefore possible to clear the idea of a growing and inexorable “capitalization” of data.
In accordance with this idea, the recent sentence no. 261 of 10 January 2020 with which the Lazio TAR - Rome Office partially confirmed the sanction imposed by the Competition and Market Authority on Facebook for having adopted a commercial practice deemed "misleading".
The judge substantially denied the assumption promoted by the famous social network according to which, for personal data, there would be no patrimonial consideration and consequently an economic interest of consumers to be protected.
It is therefore essential that operators comply, in the related commercial transactions, with those obligations of clarity, completeness and non-misleading information provided for by the legislation to protect the consumer if the latter decides to use any digital service.