Germany Orders Facebook to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users

Facebook has been ordered to stop collecting and storing data on WhatsApp users in Germany, marking the first regulatory challenge to a controversial data-sharing scheme that the social media company announced in August. In a statement published Tuesday, Germany’s privacy watchdog said that sharing WhatsApp user data with Facebook, the messaging app’s parent company, constitutes “an infringement of national data protection law.” The regulatory body also ordered Facebook to delete all data that has already been transferred from WhatsApp.