Yahoo Finance Twitter first US company to face sanctions under EU data laws
Twitter (TWTR) has been fined €450,000 (£407,443, $545,256) by Ireland’s data watchdog, making it the first major US tech company to face sanctions under Europe’s tough data protection laws.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner said on Tuesday it had levied the fine against Twitter after an almost two year-long investigation.
Ireland’s data watchdog said Twitter failed to promptly notify it about a rule breach in 2018 and failed to adequately document the incident. The breach occurred when a bug in Twitter’s Android app made some protected tweets public.
The Data Protection Commissioner said its fine would be “an effective, proportionate and dissuasive measure.” The watchdog settled on the fine earlier this year but Tuesday’s ruling by the European Data Protection Board confirmed it.
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The fine has been brought under the European Union’s GDPR rules, tough data protection laws that were introduced in 2018. Companies can be fined €30m or 4% of global turnover, whichever is higher. Twitter is the first major US company to face a sanctions under the new regime.
“We take full responsibility for this mistake and remain fully committed to protecting the privacy and data of our customers, including through our work to quickly and transparently inform the public of issues that occur,” Twitter said. “We’re sorry it happened.”
The company said the failure to notify the watchdog within the required 72 hours was “an unanticipated consequence of staffing between Christmas Day 2018 and New Years’ Day.”
Twitter said it worked closely with the data regulator throughout the investigation and has made changes to address shortcomings identified.
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