The Italian Data Protection Authority warns and sanctions a real estate agency for having not provided a feedback to requests applications
Communications carried out and received inside a social network are aimed to what is established into the usage conditions of the service. It has been affirmed by the Italian Data Protection Authority by an intervention on a real estate agency for having proposed its services to the owner of a building by using its LinkedIn contacts.
This platform has the purpose to exchange contacts in order to provide possibilities and opportunities of work and does not require that users of the social network shall use the platform in order to send messages to other users with the purpose of sell goods and services, even if this is what makes the employment.
In this context it has not any relevance the thing that an user’s profile is open or not in receiving contacts by other users of the social. All that matter is the purpose – in this case promotional – for which the message has been sent, purpose which is in contrast with that one proposed into the contractual conditions of adherence to the social network.
Once the illicit has been found, the Authority has addressed a warning to the agency, by inviting it to adopt correct organizational measures. The Authority has considered the sufficient and proportioned measures, by considering the fact that it was about a small company, which has been exposed to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, that there were not any proceedings against it and that it was only a direct contact. The agency has suffered of a sanction of 5.000 euros for having not provided feedbacks to the repeated application requests of information of the Authority, by making necessary the notification by the Nucleo Speciale Privacy of the Italian Guardia di Finanza.