‘Misleading’ info: EU fines Facebook $120 million over WhatsApp deal

BRUSSELS: The European Commission on Thursday fined US social media giant Facebook 110 million euros ($120 million) for providing misleading information on its takeover of WhatsApp.

EU regulators cleared the then $19 billion Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp in late 2014, finding no reason to believe it would dampen competition in the burgeoning social media sector.

In its statement on Thursday, the Commission recalled that the merger rules require companies to provide regulators with the accurate information essential to any review. It noted that when Facebook notified the Commission of the acquisition in 2014, the company had said it would “be unable to establish reliable automated matching between Facebook users’ accounts and WhatsApp users’ accounts”.

“However, in August 2016, WhatsApp announced updates to its terms of service and privacy policy, including the possibility of linking WhatsApp users’ phone numbers with Facebook users’ identities,” it said.

After launching a probe last year, the Commission “found that, contrary to Facebook’s statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users’ identities already existed in 2014, and that Facebook staff were aware of such a possibility.”