WhatsApp hit with record €225m fine by Irish regulator

The Data Protection Commission fined Whatsapp, which is a subsidiary of Facebook, the record sum after a GDPR investigation into how it shares information with other Facebook companies. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Social network WhatsApp has been hit with a record €225m fine by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) after a GDPR investigation into how it shares information with other Facebook companies.

The fine is by far the largest to date handed down by the Irish regulator, and is the second-biggest delivered — behind Amazon’s fine of €746m delivered by the Luxembourg regulator last month — across Europe by any supervisory authority since the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018.