Because the Privacy Guarantor played them at the Clubhouse
The Italian Privacy Guarantor has imposed a fine of 2 million euros on the company Alpha Exploration, owner of Clubhouse, the social network based on the exchange of voice chats. Here is the provision of the authority
Millionaire beating for Clubhouse, the voice-only app launched in April 2020 , accessible by invitation only.
It became popular last year (so much so that even traditional social networks wanted to imitate it), in recent times it has ended up being forgotten… not for the Italian Authority for the protection of personal data.
The Privacy Guarantor has imposed a fine of 2 million euros on the American company Alpha Exploration , owner of the Clubhouse social network. A decision taken by the Authority – explains a note – after having found "numerous violations".
The violations found by the Authority chaired by Pasquale Stanzione are: lack of transparency on the use of data of users and their "friends"; ability for users to store and share audio without the consent of registered people; profiling and sharing of account information without the identification of a correct legal basis; indefinite storage times for recordings made by the social network to counter any abuse.
Therefore, the Guarantor has prohibited any further processing of information carried out for marketing and profiling without specific consent.
Finally, the company will have to take a series of steps to comply.
All the details.
VIOLATIONS ASCERTAINED BY THE PRIVACY GUARANTOR
With the deed of initiation of the procedure dated 7 March 2022, the Privacy Guarantor contested Alpha Exploration's violation of the provisions on the subject of information, pursuant to articles 5, par. 1, 12, 13 and 14 of the Regulation: for having failed to provide, until 4 August 2021, information on the treatment to the interested parties who provided their personal data; for having failed to provide information on the treatment to subjects whose telephone numbers are present in the contact list of users who have consented to their sharing with the Clubhouse, – for having provided, after 4 August 2021, information on treatment in the absence of the requirements of clarity, transparency and comprehensibility provided therein and for having provided unsuitable information on the retention times of user data.
At the end of the complex preliminary investigation launched by the Guarantor, the administrative fine of two million euros (equal to 10% of the maximum legal amount) arrived for Alpha Exploration
and the order to adopt a series of measures to protect users.
WHAT IS CLUBHOUSE
As the Authority explains, Clubhouse is based exclusively on vocal interactions that take place in conversation rooms and is available to the public through an app managed by the US company Alpha Exploration. Users can choose to open a topic room or join someone else's room as a listener. Since January 2022, they can also keep and record part of the conversations on the platform and share the same recordings with third parties.
THE AGGRAVANT CONDITIONS FOUND BY THE AUTHORITY
Furthermore, for the Privacy Guarantor, the following have assumed relevance in the case in question: the seriousness of the violations (Article 83, paragraph 2, letter a), of the Regulation) due to the specificity of the Alpha Exploration business sector which, operating as a global social network, it has the possibility of affecting, with its treatments, significant portions of the private life of natural persons, their rights and their freedoms; the duration of the violations (Article 83, paragraph 2, letter a), of the Regulation), due to the permanent and still existing nature of many of the disputed conducts and the observation that during the period under review, despite the interlocution with the Authority, many of the critical issues have not been resolved and the very high number of subjects involved (Article 83, paragraph 2, letter a), of the Regulation).
THE NUMBER OF USERS AFFECTED
In 2021, at the time of the investigations, the social network had more than 16 million global users and about 90 thousand in Italy. To these must be added the CDs. "non-users" whose data, in particular the telephone number, are subject to processing by Alpha Exploration.
WHAT ALPHA EXPLORATION SHOULD DO
Therefore, the company will, in particular, have to introduce a functionality that allows them to learn, before entering the conversation room, of the possibility of the chat being recorded, and introduce a mechanism to inform those who are not yet users about the use that will be done of their personal data.
Furthermore, the company will have to integrate the information, specifying which legal basis applies to each purpose of the processing, the retention times of personal data and audio files, the necessary information regarding the "appointed representative", the figure envisaged by the General Regulation on data protection (Gdpr) in cases where a company, which offers services and processes the data of European citizens, is not established in any of the EU Member States.
Alpha Exploration – concludes the Authority's note – will finally have to carry out an impact assessment on the data processing carried out through the Clubhouse platform.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-il-garante-privacy-le-ha-suonate-a-clubhouse/ on Mon, 05 Dec 2022 12:26:18 +0000.