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THE DATA PROTECTION watchdog has fined LinkedIn Ireland €310 million.
It follows an inquiry which examined LinkedIn’s processing of personal data for the purposes of behavioural analysis and targeted advertising.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said the decision concerns the “lawfulness, fairness and transparency of this processing” of data of users who have created LinkedIn profiles.
The DPC submitted a draft decision to the GDPR cooperation mechanism in July 2024 and no objections were raised.
DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle today said that the “lawfulness of processing is a fundamental aspect of data protection law”.
He added that “the processing of personal data without an appropriate legal basis is a clear and serious violation of a data subjects’ fundamental right to data protection”.
The personal data in question encompassed first-party data provided directly to LinkedIn by its members and data obtained via its third-party partners relating to its members.
The inquiry commenced on 20 August 2018, following a complaint made by the French non-profit organisation, La Quadrature Du Net.
The complaint was initially made to the French Data Protection Authority and thereafter provided to the DPC in its role as the lead supervisory authority for LinkedIn, which acts as the controller for the processing of personal data at issue since LinkedIn’s European headquarters are in Dublin.
A spokesperson for LinkedIn today said: “While we believe we have been in compliance with GDPR, we are working to ensure our ad practices meet this decision by the DPC’s deadline.”
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They’re getting fined for this and not for constantly spamming every email account in the world every day?
@Seamus Enright: Notification settings!!!
@Seamus Enright:
Linkedin is particularly bad at that alright.
I have repeatedly tried to stop it to no avail so far.
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec:
Doesn’t work.
@P. J.: Does for me.
@james rowan:
If it’s fined by the Irish data protection agency it goes to the exchequer but some of them are European wide fines but brought against the company here in Ireland due to the base being here.
Great news! These charlatans have been spying on everyone for years.
@Buster Lawless: not half enough of a fine, they got £€$¥ to burn
Why are the fines always so small? Cost of doing business as they like is all such low numbers represent to them.
@Chutes:
Small? The billions in revenue that goes offshore?
300 million sure I’d pay that myself, peanuts
I believe it’s a good company to work for leaving aside the ethics.
Shame shame …shame …state faluire ..
Protect bikes and greyhound
Failed to protect Kyran
They’ll suck this up no bother! The amount of money they save in corporation tax will more than cover the fine.
@Neil Harvey:
True but they would have saved the tax whether they got the fine or not.
The two are not related.
What this will come down to is whether the profits to be made from this particular activity outweigh the fines, or maybe with some small fine tuning they can avoid future fines and still make the profits.
Signed up to Linked in during an employment training course and despite being assured by the tutor that it wouldn’t – it emailed everyone I’d ever contacted by email going back years which obviously included people I no was no longer speaking to. Pain in the hola
Should be ring-fenced for horse racing and greyhound racing.
@Ben dover: absolutely, we would be the envy of the world
@Ben dover:
Nice try
It’s perfectly clear that these “free” services exist to draw you in as you are their “product”. More fool anyone who signs up!
What about the data that they have already used? Are they being required to delete it?
Don’t click the link
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