Tag: GDPR violation
18. June 2021
Luxembourg’s National Commission for Data Protection, the CNPD, has proposed a $ 425 million (€ 348.7 million) fine against Amazon.com Inc. for alleged GDPR violations, the Wall Street Journal reports. It would be the highest penalty to date under EU data protection law, exceeding the current record penalty of € 50 million against Google LLC.
It is not yet clear to the public what exactly the allegations are since the statements are based on a confidential source. Amazon also declined to comment on the case. The charges are apparently related to Amazon’s data collection and usage practices, but do not involve the Amazon Web Services cloud computing business.
The CNPD is Amazon’s competent data protection authority as the international retail company has its regional headquarters in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. According to the Article 64 GDPR procedure, the CNPD submitted its draft decision to data protection authorities of the other EU member states, which will have to approve the sanction before it can be officially imposed. Based on comparable cases in the past, the process could take months and lead to substantive changes, including an increased or reduced fine.
Though the proposed amount would set a record, it is far below the maximum of 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year allowed by Article 83 (5) GDPR. It amounts to only about 0.1 % of Amazon’s annual revenue. As some critics say, this illustrates a pattern of data protection authorities favoring big-tech companies and often reducing large initial proposals after a long deliberation period. Given the companies’ massive incomes, such penalties are easy to recover from and ultimately, they run counter to the preventive purpose of the punishment.
As a result, these companies could soon fall under the terms of the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which were proposed by the European Commission at the end of 2020 to upgrade rules governing digital services in the EU. This new set of regulations, which specifically targets tech companies, increases potential fines to 10 % of the global turnover.
23. October 2020
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority (Datatilsynet) has issued the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens vegvesen) a fine of EUR 37.400 (NOK 400.000) for improprieties related to the use of the monitoring system installed on toll ways in Norway. They concerned processing personal data for purposes that were noncompliant with the originally stated and for not erasing video recordings after 7 days from their registration.
The penalized entity is the controller of a system processing personal data obtained from the area of toll roads in Norway. This system records personal data which especially enable the identification of vehicles (and hence their owners) that pass through public toll stations. The primary purpose of processing these personal data was to ensure safety on public roads and to optimize the operation of the tunnel and drawbridges in the county Østfold. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration however, used the recordings particularly in order to document improper fulfilments of concluded contracts by certain subjects. According to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, such procedure is unlawful and not compliant with the originally stated purposes.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration was also accused of infringements related to deletion of personal data in due time. In accordance with Norwegian regulations, recordings from monitoring (and thus personal data) may be stored until the reason for its storage ceases, but no longer than 7 days from recording the material. In the course of proceedings it turned out that the monitoring system did not have the function of deleting personal data at all. Therefore, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration was not able to fulfil its obligation according to Art. 17 GDPR. The lack of this functionality additionally indicates that the controller, while implementing the monitoring system, also omitted the requirements specified in Art. 25 GDPR.
Taking into account these circumstances, the Norwegian Data Protection Authority stated a violation of the mentioned GDPR regulations.
22. October 2020
On 10th September 2019 the Polish Data Protection Commissioner imposed a record fine in the amount of more than PLN 2,8 million or the equivalent of € 660.000 on the company Morele.net for violating the implementation of appropriate technical and organisational measures as well as the lack of verifiability of the prior consents to data processing. The Krakow-based company runs various online shops and stores customer data on a central database. According to the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO), there has been 2,2 million customers affected.
Starting point were especially two incidents at the end of 2018, when unauthorised persons got access to the customer database of the company and the contained personal data. The company notified the data breach to the UODO, which accused it particularly of violation of the confidentiality principle (Articles 5 (1) lit. f, 24 (1), 25 (1), 32 (1) lit. b, d, (2) GDPR) by failing to use sufficient technical and organisational measures to safeguard the data of its customers, such as a two-factor authentication. As claimed by the UODO, the selection of the authentication mechanism should always be preceded by an adequate risk analysis with a corresponding determination of protection requirements. The company did not adequately comply with this. However, it should have been sufficiently aware of the phishing risks as the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska) had already pointed it out.
In addition, the UODO accused the company of violation of the lawfulness, fairness, transparency and accountability principles (Articles 5 (1) lit. a, (2), 6 (1), 7 (1) GDPR) by not being able to prove that (where necessary) the personal data from installment applications had been processed on the basis of consents of data subjects. Furthermore, after a risk analysis, the company deleted the corresponding data from the database in December 2018, but according to the UODO, the deletion was not sufficiently documented.
When assessing the fine, there were many aspects which played a decisive role. Most of all, the extent of the violation (2,2 million customers) and the fact that the company processes personal data professionally in the course of its business activities and therefore has to apply a higher level of security. However, mitigating circumstances were also taken into account, such as the good cooperation with the supervisory authority, no previous ascertainable violations of the GDPR and no identifiable financial advantages for the company.
On 3rd September 2020, the Provincial Administrative Court (WSA) in Warsaw issued a judgment on Morele.net’s appeal against the decision. The WSA dismissed the appeal and considered that the decision on the fine imposed on the company was justified. Furthermore, the WSA stated that the UODO had correctly assessed the facts in the case concerned and considered that the fine imposed was high but within the limits of the law and justified by circumstances. It is expected that the company will lodge a complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court of Poland.
20. December 2019
The Austrian Regional Court, Landesgericht Feldkirch, has ruled that the major Austrian postal service Österreichische Post (ÖPAG) has to pay an Austrian man 800 Euros in compensation because of violating the GDPR (LG Feldkirch, Beschl. v. 07.08.2019 – Az.: 57 Cg 30/19b – 15). It is one of the first rulings in Europe in which a civil court granted a data subject compensation based on a GDPR violation. Parallel to this court ruling, ÖPAG is facing an 18 Mio Euro fine from the Austrian Data Protection Authorities.
Based on people’s statements in anonymised surveys, ÖPAG had created marketing groups and used algorithms to calculate the probability of the political affinities that people with certain socioeconomic and regional backgrounds might have. ÖPAG then ascribed customers to these marketing groups and thus also stored data about their calculated political affinities. Among these customers was the plaintiff of this case.
The court ruled that this combination is “personal data revealing political opinions” according to Art. 9 GDPR. Since ÖPAG neither obtained the plaintiff’s consent to process his sensitive data on political opinions nor informed him about the processing itself, ÖPAG violated the plaintiff’s individual rights.
While the plaintiff demanded 2.500 Euros in compensation from ÖPAG, the court granted the plaintiff only a non-material damage compensation of 800 Euros after weighing up the circumstances of the individual case.
The case was appealed and will be tried at the Higher Regional Court Innsbruck.
