South Africa’s Information Regulator (IR) called a last-minute halt to the activation of one of its powers under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) – a power it seemed intent on using against Facebook.
POPIA
In a gazetted notice IR chair, Pansy Tlakula declared that section 58(2) of POPIA would only “become applicable” on 1 Febraury 2022, six months later than the 1 July date she had previously proclaimed on 1 April.
The clause prohibits anyone dealing with “unique identifiers” – such as cellphone numbers- from proceeding with some types of information processing until they are given the go-ahead by the regulator.
The ban would have applied to processing “for purposes other than the one for which the identifier was specifically intended at collection,” as well as “with the aim of linking the information together with information” held by other parties.
In March the regulator cited such powers as a reason to believe South Africans were legally protected by POPIA against Facebook linking WhatsApp phone numbers with other data it collected.
Facebook claimed an update to the WhatsApp privacy policy this year does not expand sharing of data within the group, however both parts of Parliament and the IR appear to be spoiling for a fight with the social media behemoth.
Source: Business Insider
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