Facebook stops data sharing

The temporary halt is intended to give representatives of the authorities the opportunity to voice their concerns and Facebook the time to weigh them up, the world's largest online network explained on Wednesday. WhatsApp, which has around one billion users, had announced at the end of August that it would pass on the user's phone number to Facebook in the future. In addition, information about how often the short message service is used is to be shared with the corporate parent. This should improve advertising and friend suggestions in Facebook services, it said.

WhatsApp members could at least object to the use of their data for the personalization of Facebook ads and friend suggestions. However, the phone number would be shared with Facebook in any case if one wanted to continue using the app, it was said until now.

In Germany, Johannes Caspar, a data protection activist from Hamburg, took action against the plan and is calling for users to be able to decide for themselves whether to share their data. From Facebook's point of view, it is not Caspar who is responsible, but the Irish data protection authority at the headquarters of the network's international business. But data protectors in Ireland are also looking into data sharing. Facebook had bought WhatsApp about two years ago for about 22 billion dollars. At the time, it had been stated that the data would remain separate for the time being and that WhatsApp would continue to operate independently. Also now it was assured that Facebook would not get access to contents of the short messages - also because these were encrypted. (SDA)