The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information has issued an administrative order that prohibits Facebook with immediate effect to collect and store data of German WhatsApp users. Facebook is also ordered to delete all data that has already been forwarded by WhatsApp.

After the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook two years ago, both parties have publicly assured that data will not be shared between them. The fact that this is now happening is not only a misleading of their users and the public, but also constitutes an infringement of national data protection law.

Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, said, “This administrative order protects the data of about 35 million WhatsApp users in Germany. It has to be their decision, whether they want to connect their account with Facebook. Therefore, Facebook has to ask for their permission in advance. This has not happened. In addition, there are many millions of people whose contact details were uploaded to WhatsApp from the user’s address books, although they might not even have a connection to Facebook or WhatsApp. According to Facebook, this gigantic amount of data has not yet been collected. Facebook’s answer, that this has merely not been done for the time being, is cause for concern that the gravity of the data protection breach will have much a more severe impact.”

It’s good to know that the German government is looking out for its citizens. For the rest of us, there’s always Signal Messenger.