Move to protect Facebook’s users

Facebook users should be asked for consent before data collected by the group’s subsidiaries Whatsapp and Instagram and on third-party websites is combined with their social network account, Germany’s competition authority said on Thursday.

Neither should users who refuse permission for their data to be merged be shut out of Facebook services as a result, the Federal Competition Office ruled.

Officials have been looking into Facebook since mid-2016, charging that the tech giant uses other networks to collect masses of information about users without their knowledge for advertising purposes.