Uber Applied sciences Inc. was hit by a file €290 million ($324 million) nice by the Dutch privateness watchdog for failing to abide by European safety requirements when it shipped swathes of delicate information about its drivers to the US.
The Dutch Information Safety Authority stated Uber was accumulating info of drivers from Europe, comparable to taxi licenses, location information, and in some circumstances legal and medical information, and retaining them on servers within the US.
The nice is the very best penalty ever issued by the Dutch watchdog towards any firm, a spokesperson stated by e-mail. It’s additionally the largest nice Uber acquired globally.
The ride-hailing service despatched the delicate information to its US headquarters for over two years with out utilizing information switch instruments geared toward defending privateness, which meant the info have been “insufficiently protected,” the watchdog said on Monday. Uber has ended the violation final yr, the company stated.
The nice is “utterly unjustified,” stated Caspar Nixon, a spokesperson for Uber, in response to emailed questions. Uber’s information switch course of was compliant with European legal guidelines and the corporate will attraction towards the choice, Nixon stated.
Uber didn’t meet the necessities of European legal guidelines to “guarantee the extent of safety to the info with regard to transfers to the US. That could be very critical,” Aleid Wolfsen, the Dutch information safety authority’s chairman, stated in an announcement.
The Dutch information safety authority started its investigation on Uber after greater than 170 French drivers complained to a French human rights curiosity group. The probe was dealt with by the Dutch company as Uber’s European headquarters is within the Netherlands.
That is the third penalty by the Dutch information safety authority on Uber. It was previously fined for not offering enough transparency about how lengthy it retained information from European drivers and to which international locations outdoors Europe this information was forwarded. In 2018, it was penalized for not informing the Dutch watchdog a couple of information breach in time.
The fines by European privateness watchdogs can quantity to a most of 4% of the worldwide annual income of a enterprise.
{Photograph}: The headquarters of Uber in San Francisco proven in a photograph taken on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. (AP Picture/Eric Risberg)
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