Sweden: Announced Investigation into WhatsApp for alleged violation of Electronic Communications Act

On 30 March 2023, the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Board (PTS) announced the launch of an investigation into messaging service WhatsApp to review its compliance with the obligation to report a security incident. According to the PTS, the investigation was sparked by a global outage WhatsApp’s service that occurred on 25 October 2022, which PTS has assessed to be a reportable security incident. The Electronic Communications Act places an obligation on companies to report significant security incidents in which Swedish users have been affected. PTS opened the investigation after concluding that WhatsApp had neither provided timely notification to PTS nor all the information required for a complete report of the security incident. According to the PTS, it is the first time that it has initiated such proceedings related to reporting of security incidents.