Brussels, 17/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - The national data protection authorities of five European countries (France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain) launched a joint action on Thursday 16 April against the American social network Facebook. They intend to have a closer look at the site's confidentiality policy, the president of the French authority, CNIL, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, announced the same day, AFP reports.
“Concerted collective action is being carried out between five European authorities, France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, which will coordinate their national actions (…) under the responsibility of the Netherlands”, she explained. “The framework of action for each will not necessarily be the same”, but “for most of them, it's Facebook's 'privacy policy' which is the focus of concern”, she explained.
The data protection authorities may, amongst other things, look at the cross-over of data between several applications, such as Instagram or Whatsapp. The process will draw inspiration from the one carried out into Google, which was also the object of an investigation into its new confidentiality parameters.
On 9 April, a complaint was made against Facebook in Austria as well, by initiative of the activist Max Schrems and with the support of 25,000 users, who accused the American giant of making illegal use of their private data. (Solenn Paulic)