Twitter slapped with fine for breaking EU's data privacy law

[DUBLIN] Ireland's data regulator has fined Twitter 450,000 euros (S$729,546) for a bug that made some private tweets public, the regulator said on Tuesday, in the first sanction against a US firm under a new European Union data privacy system.

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation's (GDPR) "One Stop Shop" regime makes Ireland's Data Protection Commission lead regulator of Twitter, Facebook, Apple and Google in the bloc, due to the location of their EU headquarters.

GDPR has been in force since 2018, but the Twitter case is the first using a new dispute resolution system under which one lead national regulator makes a decision before consulting with the other EU national regulators.

Some European Union regulators objected to Ireland's preliminary Twitter ruling when it was issued in May, triggering a referral to the dispute resolution body, the European Data Protection Board to secure a two-thirds majority among member states.

The Twitter fine relates to a 2019 probe into a bug in its Android app, where some users' protected tweets were made public.

In particular it was levied due to Twitter's "failure to notify the breach on time to the DPC and a failure to adequately document the breach," the Data Protection Commission said in a statement.

Twitter said in a statement that the delay in reporting the incident was an "unanticipated consequence of staffing between Christmas Day 2018 and New Years' Day" and that it had made changes so that future incidents would be reported in a timely fashion.

"We take full responsibility for this mistake and remain fully committed to protecting the privacy and data of our customers, including through our work to quickly and transparently inform the public of issues that occur," the statement, posted on Twitter, said.

The Irish regulator, which has more than 20 major inquiries into US technology firms open, has the power to impose fines for violations of up to 4 per cent of a company's global revenue or 20 million euros, whichever is higher.

Twitter is the subject of at least one other inquiry by the Irish regulator.

REUTERS