Moves, a fitness app acquired by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) a few weeks back, posted a new policy update saying that it will need to share some data with affiliates, including Facebook. The new policy is somewhat in contrast to its older version, which said the app will continue as a standalone feature.
Deviation from initial policy
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) acquired the app at the end of April, and immediately a blog post from Moves said “The Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app,” adding that there are no plans to change that or blend its data with Facebook.
On Monday, Moves updated its policy quietly, saying that some information must be shared, including personally identifying information, with affiliates that “are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook,” “to help provide, understand, and improve our Services.”
After the new update on the policy from Moves, a spokesperson from Facebook reached out to Mashable to clarify how the data sharing will work, saying, “Commingling, or merging, data would allow us to identify Moves users who are also Facebook users – we have no plans to do that.” In other words, the social networking company said it doesn’t plan to link Moves user data to their respective Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) accounts but that it will provide services to the Moves app, and for that it require access to the data that Moves “collects from its users – which is ‘sharing’ data.”
Facebook, so far this year
Moves previously took an action similar to what WhatsApp took after its $19 billion acquisition by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) in February. The online chat app convinced users that their data will not be passed to Facebook, which is an aggressive data collector. However, recently Facebook has started a New Nearby Friends feature through which it can collect data from users, showing which of their friends are in their area.
So far this year, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has been busy in acquiring startups and launching new features. After its surprising acquisition of WhatsApp, the company rolled over its own news reader app Paper. Additionally, the company stated that Messenger, its standalone app, will have greater importance in the future, once Facebook acts on its plan to eliminate messaging from its main iOS and Android apps.
