Facebook received a €110 million fine from the European Commission. According to the EU Antitrust, in 2014 the social network allegedly provided "inaccurate and misleading information during the investigation" conducted by Brussels into the acquisition of WhatsApp by Mark Zuckerberg's giant.
During the operation, the value of which reached 19 billion dollars, Facebook had assured the EU Commission of not being able to connect your accounts with those of Whatsapp. Information put on paper twice: in the notification of the operation and in a response to a request from the Community executive.
Too bad that then, updating the terms of service in August 2016, Facebook has denied itself, linking Whatsapp phone numbers to social network profiles. Four months later, Brussels had asked for explanations on this novelty and, after investigating, had discovered that already in 2014, Facebook technicians knew very well that they could cross-reference the data with the newly acquired chat.
This explains the sanction, which also aims to be "a clear signal to companies: they must respect EU rules, including the obligation to provide correct information", said the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager.
We need accurate #facts to do our job. @Facebook now fined 110 million € for giving wrong/misleading information when it took over WhatsApp.
- Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) 18 May 2017
The Commission recalls that in theory the fine could have reached 1% of Facebook's turnover, i.e. 250 million euros, but it was later considered that the figure of 110 million was more "proportionate" to the case.
On the other hand, this fine has nothing to do with any other findings in terms of privacy on the update of the Whatsapp service conditions dating back to last summer.
An update already finished in the sights of the Italian Competition Guarantor, which a few days ago pointed the finger at the terms and conditions imposed on users of the messaging service. At the conclusion of two investigations resolved with a 3 million euro fine, the Italian Antitrust established that users were led to believe that without accepting the new conditions (the same ones that involved sharing data with Facebook) it would no longer be can use Whatsapp.
