Facebook Hit with €110 Million for Misleading Information on WhatsApp Merger

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Facebook has been fined 110 million euros for providing what the European Commission Merger Regulation considers to be "misleading information" regarding its WhatsApp takeover in 2014.

The European Commission requires that companies in a merger investigation provide correct information to be reviewed, which Facebook failed to do. More specifically, following the $19 billion deal the two companies signed in 2014, Facebook said it would not be able to establish automated data matching between people's Facebook accounts and the WhatsApp user accounts.

All was well until last August, when WhatsApp changed its privacy policy to say that Facebook, its parent company, would gain access to users' phone numbers, as well as other data, such as the mobile OS they are using, screen resolution and so on. All this would help Facebook target ads, especially if people have their phone numbers attached to their Facebook accounts.