German watchdog accuses site of merging data from WhatsApp and Instagram into users’ Facebook accounts without consentGermany’s competition authority has accused Facebook of abusing its dominant market position to improperly amass third-party data on its users. “Users are unaware of this.”In a preliminary assessment of an ongoing administrative proceeding against Facebook, the anti-monopoly body said it was not convinced that users had consented to Facebook tracking and merging their data, a practice which it believes “violates mandatory European data protection principles”. “Although Facebook is popular in Germany, we are not dominant,” said Yvonne Cunnane, the company’s head of data protection. On data protection, Facebook said it would continue to cooperate with the competition authority and planned to introduce additional controls and provide more information security in the coming months. Facebook is also facing scrutiny over WhatsApp from the EU data protection taskforce, Article 29 Working party, before the bloc’s tough new General Data Protection Regulations come into force in May.

Source: The Guardian December 19, 2017 18:00 UTC