Facebook has been fined 110m euros by the EU for providing “incorrect or misleading” information during its purchase of messaging service WhatsApp in 2014, the BBC reports.
The European Commission said Facebook had said it could not automatically match user accounts on its own platform and WhatsApp.
But two years later it launched a service that did just that.
Facebook said the errors it had made were not intentional.
In a statement, the Commission said: “The Commission has 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.”
However, it added that the fine would not reverse its decision to clear the $19bn purchase of WhatsApp and was unrelated to separate investigations into data protection issues.
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