Sharing photos, forwarding screenshots of other people's conversations or including someone in a WhatsApp group without permission are illegal behaviors, as experts from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) have recalled on the occasion of the celebration today of the 13th anniversary of WhatsApp.
Experts recall that the Data Protection Law also applies to WhatsApp messages and that their infraction can be reported, although they admit that there are thousands of users who are unaware of these infractions and forwarding photos or conversations without permission is common.
 |
| Javelin Missiles That Could Be Key Against Russia |
The WhatsApp social network was created on February 24, 2009 by the Ukrainian nationalized American Jan Koum and currently has more than 2,000 million users worldwide, of which some 32 million correspond to Spain, where 84% of its users They affirm that they communicate through this social network several times a day. According to the UOC, it is estimated that more than 100,000 million messages a day are currently sent via WhatsApp, many of which violate laws such as Data Protection or Intellectual Property.
According to Eduard Blasi, professor of Law and Political Science at the UOC, an expert in data protection, we commit a crime or an infraction when we send screenshots of another person without their consent, especially serious if data is disclosed openly or to a large number of recipients. "Conversations that can directly or indirectly identify a person are displayed in the screenshots, which could lead to a data protection violation," according to Blasi.
 |
| The Most Popular Messenger |
The regulation applies not only to identifying data —such as name and surname, DNI or telephone number—, but also to identifiable data, that is, to those that allow us to know who is behind the conversation "without a disproportionate effort", according to the teacher. The expert warns that "in addition to the breach of data protection, depending on the type of conversation, the people affected could claim compensation for damages, for a possible injury to their right to honor or privacy."
"And, beyond this, -he adds- in the most serious cases, if a private conversation of third parties is broadcast, a crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets could be incurred." It is also a crime to disseminate images, audios or videos of a third person without their consent and in fact the Spanish Data Protection Agency has imposed sanctions on individuals for disseminating audiovisual content of third parties without their permission.
 |
| A New Non-Binary Gender Voice |
Creating a professional WhatsApp group without asking for authorization is also illegal because to add a person to a professional WhatsApp group, it is necessary to ask for prior consent. Recently, Blasi recalled, the Spanish Data Protection Agency imposed a sanction on a sports club that had created a WhatsApp group and had added a former member.
The Catalan Data Protection Authority (APDCAT) has recently sanctioned a city council for creating a WhatsApp group with citizens, despite having previously asked for their consent. "The reason is that, by adding these contacts, there is data that is inevitably exposed -photo, name, surname or mobile phone number-, and this violates confidentiality", explained Blasi.
The UOC's Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications professor Helena Rifà , director of the master's degree in Security of Information and Communication Technologies, advises in particular not to follow links that are not trusted and delete messages that arrive from unrecognized users , that is, of all those people that we do not have on the agenda.
Keeping the WhatsApp account tidy and "clean" is another of the expert's tips, which advises leaving the groups that we no longer use and eliminating them, and discarding messages with very attractive information, which invites us to take instant action and give us no room to think about the consequences.
Do You Know What We Have Posted on
0 Comments