The Commission nationale de l 'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), the independent authority that deals with the protection of privacy in France, has ordered WhatsApp to stop sharing user data with Facebook, the company that controls it. The US company now has one month to comply with the order, otherwise it will risk sanctions from the CNIL. The request could lead other European privacy agencies to do the same, complicating Facebook's activities in the European Union, which last year had already invited the company to be more transparent about how it shares the data of users who they use both WhatsApp and Facebook. The company uses data sharing for commercial purposes, mainly related to the collection of information to show personalized advertisements. This practice was already banned last year by Germany and in the UK Facebook has agreed to stop collecting data. Last October, the privacy guarantors of the European Union asked for more transparency and challenged the current data sharing system. From next year Facebook will also have to deal with the new regulation on data protection, which will come into force in May with stricter rules and stricter penalties for those who do not respect the restrictions on the processing of users' personal data.
