Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Twitter €450,000 or around $546,000 for a data breach it disclosed back in January 2019. The agency found Twitter in violation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) because it failed to notify the regulator within 72 hours of discovering the breach, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The breach exposed some private tweets from the microblogging site’s Android users for over four years. The reason it has taken this long to announce the decision is due to the European Union-wide process.
The Irish commission had made a draft decision in May 2019 as part of the GDPR’s comments process. However, several other regulators objected to several points in its decision; leading to a dispute-resolution process.
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One basis of contention was the initial amount the DPC was going to fine Twitter, according to the Wall Street Journal. The €450,000 fine is short of 2 per cent of Twitter’s global annual revenue that can be levied as stipulated by the GDPR for failing to properly disclose a data breach.
The Irish DPC’s initial intention was an even lesser fine; but the dispute-resolution process led to an increase. The DPC’s smaller fine was because it believed Twitter’s failure was due to negligence; as opposed to being intentional.
Twitter told TechCrunch that it respects the regulator’s decision. “An unanticipated consequence of staffing between Christmas Day 2018 and New Years’ Day resulted in Twitter notifying the IDPC outside of the 72 hours statutory notice period. We have made changes so that all incidents following this have been reported to the DPC in a timely fashion. We take responsibility for this mistake; and remain fully committed to protecting the privacy and data of our customers,” the company said.
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