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Comment by jonplackett

2 days ago

And barely gets enforced

2775 fines for a total of €6.8B since July 2018. It's not A LOT (I would hope for A LOT MORE fines), but it's not nothing.

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

  • It’s very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

    But also kinda weird. There seems to be a lot of fines for hospitals for example.

    Some Portuguese hospital was fined €400,000 for ‘Insufficient technical and organisational measures to ensure information security’

    • Medical, banking and insurance are three industries that the European data privacy watchdogs are much more strict about because of the potential for damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDPR_fines_and_notices

Top 5 fines:

1 - Meta - Ireland - €1.2 billion

2 - Amazon Europe - Luxembourg - €746 millions

3 - WhatsApp - Ireland - €225 millions

4 - British Airway - UK - £183 millions

5 - Google - France - €60 millions

I wish every law barely got enforced this way.

  • I'd say the numbers listed here prove the GPs point of poor enforcement. The largest fine is roughly 0.97% of Meta's 2023 revenue, the equivalent of a $600 fine for somebody making 60k / year. It's a tiny-tiny cost of doing business at best, definitely not a deterrent, given Meta's blatant disregard for GDPR since then.

    • > the equivalent of a $600 fine for somebody making 60k / year

      I don't know about you, but on that income I would certainly not brush off such a fine as a "cost of doing business". Would it cause me financial trouble, or would it force me to sacrifice other expenses? Absolutely not. But would I feel frustrated at having to pay it, feel stupid for my mistake, and do my best to avoid it in the future? Absolutely yes.

      3 replies →

    • 1% of Meta's global revenue is a tiny-tiny cost of doing business? At that point, I think I can stop even trying to argue here. It's a massive fine any way you put it. Especially when you consider the ceiling hasn't been reached and non compliance is more and more costly by design.

      6 replies →