EU Accuses Facebook Of Giving Misleading Information During WhatsApp Takeover

The European Commission has charged Facebook with providing misleading information during its takeover of the online messaging service WhatsApp, opening the company to a possible fine of 1 percent of its turnover. From a report on Reuters: The statement of objections sent to Facebook will not have an impact on the approval of the $22 billion merger in 2014, the Commission said in a statement on Tuesday. Facebook becomes the latest Silicon Valley target of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who has demanded Apple pay back $14 billion in taxes to Ireland and hit Google with two market abuse investigations. The issue regards a WhatsApp privacy policy change in August when it said it would share some users' phone numbers with parent company Facebook, triggering investigations by a number of EU data protection authorities. The Commission said Facebook had indicated in its notification of the planned acquisition that it would be unable reliably to match the two companies' user accounts. "In today's Statement of Objections, the Commission takes the preliminary view that, contrary to Facebook's statements and reply during the merger review, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook users' IDs with WhatsApp users' IDs already existed in 2014," it said.

Re:

[jgullstr]

How is it possible they have a BILLION active users when (people like me) have never once used it?

Even if there are 6.4 BILLION people like you, they could still have a billion active users. Also, your trillion dollar claim is invalid, Facebook is valued at around 350 billion.

Re:

[jgullstr]

According to the rest of the world, around 3.5 billion are, "dumbass".

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here Let me Google that for you

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+many... [lmgtfy.com]

Dumbass

FFS

[Big Hairy Ian]

Of course there's absolutely no way the company could correlate the two accounts based on the information in their profiles /sarcasm. OK people who deliberately obfuscate themselves online it would be very difficult to match them up but the vast majority of the rest of the users will have filled out their details accurately and used the email and probably the same god damned password they will be easy to match up

Basically the EU's anti trust chief is as tech savvy as my 40 years dead grandmother.

Snopes

[slapout]

Snopes labels this as fake news...

Re:

[Mashiki]

No it doesn't. ... and the source is Reuters

Reuters is a bastion of fake news, just like AFP, Canadian Press, and so on. Don't believe? Well that's too bad, I'm a professional fact checker, it's always right. And I'm just as good as ABC news or snopes. Now bow before my prowess.

Re:

[JaredOfEuropa]

Snopes isn't always right. Certainly not about breaking stories like these.

Update: Facebook's reply

[Gravis Zero]

"EU,,, u is tots rong. Were u get ur news, facebook?" ;)

Margrethe Vestager is a star

[Rumagent]

Best thing to come out the EU in a very long time. A person of integrity that cares more about the rule of law than whatever is convenient for random megacorp.

Re:

[GNious]

Fully expected a post like that to be instantly buried ...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it just goes after companies that violate the law. Most companies hit with regulatory action by the EC are European, but they probably don't make the news as much where you live.

The EU does not abuse regulatory action as a means of protectionism, like the US does.

"Bu- bu- but--"

[mujadaddy]

"But the American corporation told us what we wanted to hear!?!?!?!?"

Re:

[jgullstr]

And now they possibly face a 100M fine for lying about it. If they do get fined, maybe next company will live up to their claims.

Re:

[mujadaddy]

A toothless, feel-like-they've-addressed-the-problem fine... Facebook can pay that ten times a year and still make a profit from its users. Doubtless, teams of lawyers will be able to whittle that amount down, as well.

Unreliably match user accounts?

[Midnight Thunder]

The phrase "it would be unable reliably to match the two companies' user accounts" stands out. Given the data mining capabilities of these corporations, I can't quite believe that. That matching phone number in both Whatsapp and Facebook, nah there is not way we could use that as a linking piece of data?