Tag: Information Obligation

AEPD issues highest fine for GDPR violations

5. March 2021

The Spanish Data Protection Authority, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), imposed a fine of EUR 6.000.000 on CaixaBank, Spain’s leading retail bank, for unlawfully processing customers’ personal data and not providing sufficient information regarding the processing of their personal data. It is the largest financial penalty ever issued by the AEPD under the GDPR, surpassing the EUR 5.000.000 fine imposed on BBVA in December 2020 for information and consent failures.

In the opinion of the AEPD, CaixaBank violated Art. 6 GDPR in many regards. The bank had not provided sufficient justification of the legal basis for the processing activities, in particular with regard to those based on the company’s legitimate interest. Furthermore, deficiencies had been identified in the processes for obtaining customers’ consent to the processing of their personal data. The bank had also failed to comply with the requirements established for obtaining valid consent as a specific, unequivocal and informed expression of intention. Moreover, the AEPD stated that the transfer of personal data to companies within the CaixaBank Group was considered an unauthorized disclosure. According to Art. 83 (5) lit. a GDPR, an administrative fine of EUR 4.000.000 EUR was issued.

Additionally, the AEPD found that CaixaBank violated Art. 13, 14 GDPR. The bank had not complied with the information obligations since the information regarding the categories of personal data concerned had not been sufficient and the information concerning the purposes of and the legal basis for the processing had been missing entirely. What’s more, the information provided in different documents and channels had not been consistent. The varying information concerned data subjects’ rights, the possibility of lodging a complaint with the AEPD, the existence of a data protection officer and his contact details as well as data retention periods. Besides, the AEPD disapproved of the use of inaccurate terminology to define the privacy policy. Following Art. 83 (5) lit. b GDPR, a fine of EUR 2.000.000 was imposed.

In conclusion, the AEPD ordered CaixaBank to bring its data processing operations into compliance with the legal requirements mentioned within six months.

Poland: First GDPR-fine imposed

29. March 2019

The President of the Polish Supervisory Authority (Personal Data Protection Office, UODO) imposed the first fine for the amount of PLN 943,000, which is around € 220,000.

A Warsaw-based company received this fine for not being compliant with GDPR, particularly for failure to meet the information obligation of Article 14. The fined company commercially processes data from more than six million entrepreneurs, which it obtained from publicly available sources, such as the Central Electronic Register and Information on Economic Activity (CEIDG). The company’s database is often used by banks to verify the creditworthiness of the data subjects. According to the Polish Authority, the company did not provide the data subjects with the information requested in Art. 14 para 1-3 GDPR (e.g. the source of their data, the purpose of the data processing, the data subject’s rights under GDPR), hence the data subjects had no possibility to object to further processing of their data or to request their rectification or erasure.

Out of the six million data subjects only 90 000 were informed by the company via e-mail (more than 12 000 of them objected to the processing of their data). For the remaining subjects (whose e-mails were unknown) the company only presented the information clause on its website and therefore failed to comply with Art. 14 GDPR.

“The controller was aware of its obligation to provide information. Hence the decision to impose a fine of this amount on this entity”, said Dr Edyta Bielak-Jomaa, President of UODO. The company claimed that information by registered mail would be associated with disproportionate costs and thus relies on the vaguely worded exception of Art. 14 (5) GDPR, which states that the provision of such information proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort. The supervisory authority however, finds this explanation insufficient as they could have called the data subjects or inform them by regular mail.