The lead Personal Data Protection Authority has imposed a sanction of 746 million euros to Amazon for having breached the privacy in connection with its advertising practices. It is about the highest sanction since the GDPR has been introduced, that by its own amount to more than double of 307 million euro of the latest sanctions imposed during last year.
After the publication of the news on Wall Street Journal on the 30th of July, the sanction has been imposed by the Luxembourg Data Protection Authority (CNPD) has been recognized by the same Amazon, without providing additional details and has affirmed that the decision is unfounded and disproportionate, by announcing that it will appeal, even if since lot of time the e-commerce colossus has been frequently accused of incompliance behaviors towards privacy of users or not compliance with the GDPR.
By its part the CNPD has not left declarations, and neither has given the news of the prevision on the institutional website. The Luxembourg Commission is the lead supervisory authority for Amazon’s activities in the European Union as “lead authority”, because the company has its headquarter in the Luxembourg European headquarter.
The first previews on the maxi sanction had been leaked out by the Wall Street Journal, that since the beginning of June thought about a draft of the CNPD which wanted to sanction privacy practices of Amazon by proposing to the other 26 national data protection authorities of the European Union a sanction of more than 425 million dollars. But numbers result more than the initial expectations.
In case of cross border privacy, decisions shall be agreed among different privacy regulators, with procedure which can bring to substantial rectifications and potential incrementation or reduction of proposed sanction. According to the rumors of the Wall Street Journal, the Luxemburg Authority has received a complaint by another European privacy Regulator, who was asking an increase of the sanction.
The maxi sanction against Amazon will represent about the 4.2% of the net profit of 21.3 billion dollars reported by the company for 2020, as well as the 0.2% of its 386 billion dollars.
SOURCE: FEDERPRIVACY