The e-commerce giant said that it disagrees with the ruling of the European privacy watchdog
Luxembourg’s CNPD imposed a fine of €746m on Amazon for GDPR violation. (Credit: Tedder/Wikimedia Commons)
Amazon has been imposed with a fine of €746m by the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) for violating the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The company had disclosed the fine by the European privacy watchdog in a securities filing. It was levied in mid-July 2021.
According to the CNPD, Amazon’s processing of personal data did not comply with the bloc’s data protection laws. The fine was imposed on Amazon Europe Core, which was also ordered to make corresponding practice revisions.
Based in Luxembourg, Amazon Europe Core is engaged mainly in offering computer processing and data preparation services.
Amazon in the securities filing said that the CNPD’s decision does not have any merit and the company intends to vigorously defend itself in the matter.
The e-commerce giant has been quoted by Bloomberg, as saying: “There has been no data breach, and no customer data has been exposed to any third party.
“These facts are undisputed. We strongly disagree with the CNPD’s ruling.”
CNPD’s decision was made based on a probe launched by it following a complaint made against Amazon in 2018 by La Quadrature du Net, a French privacy rights group.
La Quadrature du Net alongside 10,000 people took collective legal action against Amazon in May 2018 alleging that the latter’s targeted ad system forces onto the users and is not based on free consent.
The French advocacy group stated: “Just as we were starting to fear that any useful legal action against Big Tech had become impossible, hope came from Luxembourg (not something we had anticipated!), taking our motivation back to our 2018 levels.
“Business models based on domination and exploitation of our privacy and our free consent are disturbingly illegitimate and go against the values that our democratic societies claim to defend.”