Dude this is the internet we use. If you download an app, ESPECIALLY a facebook related one, in the fine print of what you're not reading but are pressing agree to anyway, you're giving them permission to basically plant a bug on your phone that runs through it with a fine toothed digital comb looking for anything they can use to sell to marketers.
Look I know that's most things, fucking affiliate links and all, but it's a reality. When you click on it, your cookies get raided to basically create ads that specifically cater to you. I can't knock this, it's fucking brilliant, but it's also kind of disturbing to think how little privacy you truly have.
As for the groups getting deleted, I saw a bunch of shit on this, the great 'purge' of 2015. People are so obsessed with hurting other people in this community sometimes. I mean shit talking and fighting is small scale bullshit, but stuff that leads to entire groups being taken down is just lunacy.
2016 people, the future is a blessing and a curse unfortunately.
If you really want to be as tinfoil hat as possible, run Tor for all your internet use and make sure you have damned near every extension or addon blocked, because those fuck you over too. Then just avoid anything popular on your phone.
Personally I don't mind affiliate links running cookies and shit, that's just their entire business model, but when it comes to Facebook if you shine a light on even the SMALL shit they pull you'll be disgusted. There's a great amount of information on this, proven information, not just here-say and conspiracy theory shit. The biggest corporations are the ones with the most skeletons in the closet, the bigger they are, the more ugly the shit they do in the shadows gets.
I think the reason the vaping community has a huge problem with infighting and such shit is because of the way everyone outside of the vaping community treats us. We're faced with having vaping taken out of our hands every day, people push propaganda against us every chance they get, we're hated by a lot of people for no good reason at all. When you back this many people into caves it's bound to get nasty just because of all the pent of oppression that gets flung on us.
Its hard to love thy neighbor when thy world roasts your community on the stake every single day. Sadly we all don't have the outlets and channels we'd like to fight back with, we're forced to use middlemen like CASAA and fucking bless them for the shit they do. But when you're left without an outlet for your rage against the people slandering you on an individual level, shit builds up inside of you that gets let out on those around you.