In a decision published on Thursday 24 October, the DPC, the Irish Data Protection Commission, announced that it had imposed a fine of €310 million on the professional social network LinkedIn– owned by the American giant Microsoft – for breaching the European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with regard to targeted advertising.
According to the DPC, “the consent obtained by” LinkedIn from its users for the use of their personal data “was not freely given, sufficiently informed or specific, or unambiguous”.
In addition to the fine, which is the first in the EU for LinkedIn, the DPC is enjoining the social network to “bring its (data) processing into compliance” with the GDPR.
The decision follows an investigation opened on 20 August 2018, after French organisation La Quadrature du Net filed a complaint, initially with the French Data Protection Authority and then passed on to the DPC.
See the DPC press release: https://aeur.eu/f/e0r (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)