Netflix must pay million-euro fine – after Noyb complaint
Customers were not sufficiently informed about the use of their data – Netflix has to pay a fine of almost five million euros.
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Almost five years after the data protection association Noyb filed a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority, a decision has been made: Netflix must pay a fine of 4.75 million euros. The complaint was that the streaming service had not sufficiently informed its customers about the use of their data.
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According to Noybn, Netflix has already appealed against the fine, but has not yet questioned the decision as a whole. Noyb's complaint from 2019 was directed against several streaming services, none of which had sufficiently complied with the obligation to provide information stipulated in the GDPR. This also concerned Amazon Prime, Dazn, Apple Music, Filmmit, SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube. The extent of these proceedings is currently unclear.
Structural violations and further investigation
At the time, Noyb founder Max Schrems spoke of "structural" violations of the regulation. Article 15 of the GDPR stipulates that every user must be able to obtain a copy of all raw data stored about them. The purpose of the data processing and other information must also be provided. In addition to the Netherlands, complaints have also been lodged in Austria, where no decision has yet been made.
Stefan Rossetti, data protection lawyer at Noyb, writes in a press release: "We are pleased with the data protection authority's decision to impose a fine on Netflix. However, it has taken almost five years to achieve this. This is actually a very simple case." Noyb is also investigating whether the data protection authority has adequately addressed all the points criticized. The issue is that although the lack of information on data processing was addressed, the fact that it was not possible to obtain a complete copy of one's own data was not.
(emw)
