EU charges Amazon with a $887M fine for unethical advertising practices
Luxembourg’s National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) charged tech giant Amazon with a record-breaking fine of €746 million ($887 million) over customer data misuse and unethical advertisement targeting.
Amazon spokesperson described the decision of the Commission as “baseless” and added that “Maintaining the security of our customers’ information and their trust are top priorities.”
The GDPR penalty is a result of a complaint by a French privacy rights group a Quadrature du Net from three years ago. In 2018, representing the interests of over 10.000 European customers, the organization targeted a list of monopolies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn, claiming that the companies manipulate customers through advertising for the sake of their own profit and interests.
Such practices contradict the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was officially implemented for all members of the EU in May 2018.
Earlier this year, in June, the French competition authority imposed a fine of €220m on US tech giant Google for favoring its own services in online advertising.
Recently, Facebook was also caught under fire. Over 40 state attorneys united forces and wrote to CEO Mark Zuckerberg to express their concerns regarding the advertising targeting of children under the age of 18, Trending Topics SEE reported. As a result, Facebook and Instagram will no longer allow advertisers to target minors on their interests or their activity on other websites.
