Amazon on receiving end of the largest fine by the GDPR to date

In May of this year the GDPR showed how big its teeth are when it fined the big tech company Amazon a whopping €746 million. To put that in Rand value, as of today, that is more or less R12,975,896,942.00. I rounded the cents down by the way.

Data privacy is taken very seriously

Amazon is not the first big tech company to be fined by the European agency, Google had the previous record for the largest fine with €50 million. There are also many large cases and potential fines to companies that breach the European regulations on the way. The GDPR is clearly leading the way in enforcing data privacy laws, more so than the USA which has a history of protecting business rights over citizen’s rights. The South African government aims to be on par with the European agency so be prepared for our own authorities in South Africa to take your data privacy very seriously.

Enforcement not without its problems

Amazon is of course appealing the fine. Not much has been revealed what the fine was for exactly but we do know that it was not for a data breach. The regulations do encompass more than just data security. However, interpretation of the data privacy laws and its enforcement are probably going to tie up the agency with litigation and backlogs. This can be expected as the legislation is relatively new, coming into force on the 25th of May 2018. The South African regulators will most likely encounter similar issues with our brand new Act but most of the ‘breaking of ground’ by countries with strict data privacy laws should help hasten the teething problems.

Sources

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-gdpr-fine-shows-power-limits/