Facebook has clarified alterations to the privacy policy of its newly acquired activity tracker, Moves, explaining the difference between "sharing" and "commingling" of data.
A Facebook spokesman told the Guardian that the reason the terms and conditions were updated to allow the app to share data was to allow Facebook employees to work on improving the app.
The Moves team is small, and since the acquisition, Facebook has been ploughing resources into the company, providing support and services to the app.
While many users questioned the change in the privacy policy, coming just 11 days after Moves had promised that it had no plans to "commingle data with Facebook", the Facebook spokesman argued that "commingling" data is different from simply "sharing" it.
The former specifically refers to merging data from Moves accounts into Facebook accounts, which would enable Facebook to identify people using Moves who also use Facebook. Moves user data and Facebook user data are separate, and Facebook says there remain no plans to change that fact.
But Facebook's clarification may have come too late, with a surge of users taking to Twitter to announce that they were deleting Moves following the announcement. While some were angry, with one user calling it a "sleazy dishonest backtrack", many more expressed sadness. "I love Moves, but Facebook doesn't respect my privacy," said another former user.
Competitors seized on the announcement to try and win some of the ex-users over. Activity tracker Human is promoting the fact that Moves users can import all of their data and begin using the new app immediately. "We're not Moves," the company explains. "Human makes it fun to move more."
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