Twitter: fine of € 450,000 for a breach of data protection
Twitter has been fined 450,000 euros in Europe for data protection. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has decided of the fine. The European regulator speaks of a non-compliance with the GDPR.
In January 2019, Twitter warned its users of a security breach. It made it possible to see tweets from users who were supposed to be protected. The problem is, this bug has been around for years.
The DPC believes that Twitter did not properly inform the European regulator within 72 hours. This explains the administrative fine of 450,000 euros. Irish Commission talks about a fine “Effective, proportionate and dissuasive”.
This is the first notable decision taken by the Irish authority under the GDPR. This was born in 2018 and it gives more power to regulators to protect consumers. The decision involves regulatory authorities from different European countries and illustrates the complexity of the EU’s new data protection mechanism.
The Irish Data Protection Commission has opened around 20 investigations in total. But it has so far not imposed a significant fine. The fine for Twitter is, however, much lower than the GDPR could have decided. According to the regulations, Twitter could have been fined equivalent to 4% of its annual worldwide turnover. It was $ 140 million in 2019.
