On Tuesday(10/06/2021), Wall street journal reported that Amazon could be facing more than $425 million in penalties for violating the European Union’s privacy law.
The Wall Street Journal report said Luxembourg’s data-protection commission, the CNPD, has circulated a draft decision authorizing Amazon’s privacy practices and proposing the fine among the bloc’s 26 other national authorities. This $425-million penalty could be the largest-ever fine under European Union privacy laws so far.
Amazon’s collection and use of personal data in a way that allegedly violates Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), sources said, although they declined to provide specifics. Amazon declined to comment but has previously said it complies with the law in every country in which it does business.
In one case, Facebook could face fines of between 30 million and 50 million euros for alleged data-sharing violations involving its WhatsApp app. In 2019, another tech giant Google was fined $57 million by the French data regulator Commission Nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), for a breach of the EU's data protection rules. Popular microblogging site Twitter was also fined $547,000 by the Irish data regulator, Data Protection Commission in 2020, following a bug in its Android app that led to some protected tweets becoming public.
Amazon is already facing another legal battle in the EU, filing suit against the body in a case involving the Italian Competition Authority. The Journal notes that the decision is not yet final. It must be approved by other EU privacy bodies, which could take months and could lead to a higher or lower fine. EU law allows regulators to fine up to 4 percent of a company’s yearly revenue. The fine proposed in Luxembourg would be half that amount.
