IRELAND – The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has issued Twitter with a €450,000 fine for breaching the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The DPC began an investigation in January 2019 after Twitter, which has its European base in Dublin, notified the regulator of a data breach discovered in December 2018.
The breach resulted from a design bug which led to protected tweets becoming accessible to the wider public if a user on an Android device changed the email address associated with their Twitter account.
An external Twitter contractor discovered the bug on Boxing Day 2018 and Twitter disclosed the issue to the DPC on 8 January 2019.
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Irish DPA Issues €450,000 Fine Against Twitter for Data Breach Following EDPB Decision under the GDPR Consistency Mechanism Thursday, December 17, 2020
On December 15, 2020, the Irish Data Protection Commission (“DPC”) announced its fine of €450,000 against Twitter International Company (“Twitter”), following its investigation into a breach resulting from a bug in Twitter’s design. The fine is the largest issued by the Irish DPC under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) to date and is also its first against a U.S.-based organization.
The bug in question resulted in protected tweets being changed to unprotected tweets, making them widely available to the public without the user’s knowledge. This bug impacted Twitter users on Android devices who had changed the email address associated with their Twitter accounts. Twitter estimated that 88,726 Twitter users in Europe were affected between September 5, 2017 and January 11,
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