Italy: Privacy watchdog fines COVID lockdown-era party app

Rome: US social media app Clubhouse, which became popular during the COVID-19 lockdowns, has been hit with a €2 million fine for violations of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

In a press release on Monday, Italy’s privacy regulator, the Garante, said it had found “numerous violations” of the GDPR by the app, which is owned by U.S. firm Alpha Exploration.

The Garante said the app was not transparent enough about the use of users’ data; that it gave users the ability to store and share audio without others’ consent; that it profiled and shared account information without identifying a proper legal basis; and that it had indefinite retention periods of the recordings made by the social network.

As well as meting out a fine, the Rome-based regulator also ordered the app to introduce a feature allowing users to learn, before entering a chat room, that the chat might be recorded, and to introduce a mechanism to inform those who are not yet users of the use what will be done with their personal data. The company will also have to add extra information to its privacy notice, such as specifying what the data retention periods are.

The app, which allows users to hang out in chat rooms, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. It is also being probed by the French privacy regulator.