Twitter Fined in Irish GDPR Action

Ireland has its first major General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) action, one that saw Twitter fined €450,000 (roughly $547,000) for failing to promptly and properly deal with a data breach. The action, as reported in Tech Crunch, is notable because Ireland is the lead European Union privacy supervisor for a number of large, well-known technology companies.

The action results from an incident Twitter first reported in January 2019, involving coding errors that could have left users' personally identifiable information public even after the users selected options claiming to keep tweets private. Tech Crunch posted an update that Twitter had forwarded a statement, attributed to Damien Kieran, its chief privacy officer and global data protection officer, accepting responsibility for the "mistake" and saying that the company "appreciate[s] the clarity this decision brings for companies and consumers around the GDPR's breach notification requirements."

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