Data protection: Amazon receives a record fine of 746 million euros in Luxembourg
Amazon was sentenced on July 16 to a fine of 746 million euros by Luxembourg, in this case the National Commission for Data Protection.
Johannes Eisele AFP / Archivos
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3 min
Amazon has been convicted in Luxembourg for violating European Union data protection regulations.
The complaint had been lodged in France, but it was forwarded to Luxembourg because that is where the company established its head office.
Three years after filing the complaint, the Luxembourg regulator is thus imposing on the online sales company the highest fine ever imposed by a national body.
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With our correspondent in Brussels
,
Pierre Benazet
It is European law that has not been respected by
Amazon
, but once it is not customary, it is not the European Union, but one of its member countries which imposed this record fine.
Amazon was fined on July 16 to 746 million euros by the Luxembourg National Data Protection Commission.
The conviction therefore has two weeks, but this commission does not communicate on individual cases and it is through Amazon itself that we learned of the existence of this record fine.
Personal data supposed to be protected
Since May 2018, the general European data protection regulation, the GDPR, entered into force, and it is this regulation that Amazon would not have respected.
The practice of the American company is to use the research and the orders of its customers to offer them similar products, an advertising targeting which amounts to using personal data supposed to be protected by the European regulation.
For its part, the European Commission emphasizes that in the first twenty months of the GDPR, several hundred cumulative fines have yielded barely 114 million euros in total, a far cry from the Luxembourg fine.
At the origin of this conviction, the association for the defense of freedoms La Quadrature du Net had filed five complaints with the French gendarme of personal data, the Cnil, against Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft at the end of May 2018, after the entry into force of the GDPR regulations.
Amazon having its headquarters in Luxembourg, the CNIL had transmitted the file, which resulted in this fine.
Amazon considered the conviction unfounded, while La Quadrature du Net sees it as a historic sanction.
After 50 million against Google in 2019, a new record for GDPR fines, still on our collective complaints: 746 million against Amazon!
Congratulations to the 10,000 people who signed the complaint with us in 2018, we don't give a damn about the GAFAM! Https: //t.co/J4sDxesoRT
- La Quadrature du Net (@laquadrature) July 30, 2021
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