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| Amazon faces a fine of $888 million in Europe |
After the data protection authority fined 746 million euros (8.88 million US dollars) for violating strict data protection regulations in the European Union, Amazon is facing the largest data protection penalty in the European Union.
Luxembourg's data protection authority CNPD has imposed a record fine on Amazon in a July 16 ruling, accusing the online retailer of processing personal data in violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Amazon disclosed the fines in regulatory documents on Friday and declared the decision unfounded. These facts are undeniable. We strongly reject the decision of the National Democratic Council.
"There was no data breach and no customer data was passed on to third parties," Amazon said in a statement. He adds that she wants to appeal.
The decision ended with an investigation that began in 2018 with a complaint from the French data protection organization La Quadrature du Net.
Bastien Le Querec, a member of the La Quadrature du Net litigation team, said this was the first step towards imposing a deterrent fine. However, we must be vigilant about whether the decision includes an injunction to correct the violations.
Since the EU General Data Protection Regulation came into force in May 2018, the powers of the EU data protection authorities have expanded significantly.
Amazon faces historic European fines
For the first time, the rule allows regulators to impose fines of up to 4% of the company's annual global sales.
The highest fine to date is the 50 million euro fine that CNIL has imposed on Google.
Domestic law obliges Luxembourg authorities to maintain confidentiality and prevents them from commenting on individual cases or acknowledging receipt of complaints.
Amazon's EU base is located in Luxembourg, which means that local supervisory authorities are responsible for monitoring compliance with data protection laws.
In the past few years, Amazon has been censored due to the large amount of data it has collected from a number of customers and partners. Including independent distributors, Alexa users, and buyers.
The company says it is collecting data to improve the customer experience and has set guidelines on what employees can do with it.
Some lawmakers and regulators fear that the company will use its knowledge to gain an unfair advantage in the market.
The privacy inquiry also added a strict antitrust review of the European trade giant's activities.
Amazon is under investigation by the European Union for unfair use of seller data across its platform and to promote its products.
Germany has conducted several Amazon sales surveys. The UK is also looking into similar issues with the European Union.
The European Commission also announced last month that voice assistants and data used by Amazon and other companies to track user behavior pose potential antitrust issues.