The Bundeskartellamt, Germany’s federal cartel office, issued a ruling today aimed at severely curtailing Facebook’s practice of combining user data from multiple sources, both inside and outside of the social network’s family of applications.
Today’s ruling is the culmination of an investigation that began in March 2016.
Facebook has 30 days to appeal the decision to the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, and it will do just that, according to a Newsroom post by Facebook Ireland head of data protection Yvonne Cunnane (the company’s European headquarters is in Dublin) and director and associate general counsel Nikhil Shanbhag.
Anticipation of this ruling was likely a factor in Facebook’s plans to unify the infrastructure that powers Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct.
The
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