• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, November 8, 2016

They just don't seem to get it, for some reason. These huge American tech giants don't seem to get that the EU -- and that includes the UK -- has moved on with privacy and is about to take restrictions to the next logical level. Until right now, of course, that is. In a massive decision, the UK's Information Commissioner has asked that data sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp should be paused while the full legality of the issue is looked into.

If Facebook wants to know the way the wind is blowing, it's not good news. Just to be clear, this is a nice British way of telling you to stop because you're acting illegally. Subtlety might not be on their radar, but over here if you're told to pause because you don't have permission to do what you're doing, that's about as close as you come to a warning before a large fine is issued.

Privacy is a tricky one. Anyone who has updated their iOS on an iPhone will know how much attention the average person pays to the T&Cs that come between a user and the latest software version. It has always been the same with Facebook. Whatever its new policy is, we all just carry on uploading pictures of the kids and cute kittens. Despite all the spurious posts flying around that the social giant owns all your photos unless you perform a pointless series of keystrokes, privacy is not a massive issue. It's a pain to do, but you can go in to the site's privacy centre and take some control of what happens to the content you share on the site.

What you're not able to do, of course, is tell Facebook that just because you have been using WhatsApp (likely before the two became one) you don't necessarily want both services sharing your data. It just kind of brings it all home, how powerful the tech giants are when your data is suddenly given a leg up to jump over what you thought was a high wall between the two services.

it's not so much a Facebook issue -- I think it's more about WhatsApp. It's there for our private messaging between friends and relatives. Facebook is far more about open and public displays. WhatsApp is more private, and that's the way Brits want to keep it. Judging by uproar around the world, we're not the only ones.

Most people aren't too upset about their data being used to target them better on Facebook because if you join groups and share particular types of content, it follows that the site will get a better hook on you and offer more targeted advertising. We get this, but we don't want intimate details of our private conversations being added to the data bank Facebook has on us to be target ads around snippets that we only want our nearest and dearest to know. Likewise, we don't want Facebook trying to sell us things over WhatsApp based on what we have been doing on the social site. 

This is, and will continue to be, wrapped up as giving us better friend suggestions, but we all know it's about enriching data so Facebook can make more advertising bucks.

But it always sounded creepy, and the ICO agrees. What's more, it's almost certainly illegal. The interesting part? Privacy laws, under GDPR, are going to get a lot tighter, and the likes of Facebook are going to need to prove they have our freely given, informed consent for each use they put our data to.

If they can't obey the law as it is now, what chance do they have when the iron fist and heavy fines swing into action in May 2018?