In a historic settlement, the French government doled out a fine of €50 million penalty in March 2020 for failing to be transparent to it’s users about the personal data that it collected from its services and products.
In a similar fashion, Italian telecommunication giant, Telecom Italia, was also awarded a GDPR fine of $31.5 million or €27.8 million by the Italian Data Protection Authority for resorting to cold calls, emails, and calls. British Airways were also handed out a fine surmounting to $26 million following the 2018 data breach incident. Hackers were able to access personally identifiable data of more that 400,000 customers. The initial penalty was set at $238 million, however, since the airline is struggling with the slump from the pandemic, the Information Commissioners Office, reduced the fine amount to $26 million. Similarly, Marriott’s penalty of $123 million was also cut down to $23.8 million owing to the business performing poorly in the midst of a worldwide travel ban. The company was fined after it failed to protect the critical data of its customers that included details of names, passport numbers, payment card details and addresses along with some flight reservation data.
