Amazon’s $100 billion quarter has gotten a bit sour after the company got hit with a record, 746 million euro ($886 million) fine for violating the EU’s privacy rules.
According to Amazon’s regulatory filing, the decision was made on July 16 by Luxembourg’s data protection authority CNPD, which claimed that Amazon’s processing of personal data did not comply with the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules.
“We believe the CNPD’s decision to be without merit and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter,” Amazon said in the filing.
Amazon claims that the CNPD’s decision also includes “practice revisions,” though it’s unclear what these consist of.
According to Bloomberg, the decision is a result of a probe started in 2018 by French privacy rights group La Quadrature du Net.
“It’s a first step to see a fine that’s dissuasive, but we need to remain vigilant and see if the decision also includes an injunction to correct the infringing behavior,” a member of the group’s litigation team told Bloomberg.
The 746 million euro fine would be the largest ever imposed for violation of EU’s GDPR rules. The GDPR is a wide-ranging set of rules which determines how companies operating within the European Union should handle users’ private data. Prior to this, the largest penalty imposed for violating GDPR was to Google, which was fined $57 million in January 2019.
