Fine Archives - Gizmochina

Apple to be Fined over $500 Million by the European Union, Report States

Anubhav — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 05:53:39 +0000

Apple is on the brink of receiving another significant penalty from the European Union, with reports suggesting a fine nearing 500 million euros ($539 million). It seems like the trillion-dollar company cannot catch a break, as this move joins a long list in the EU’s ongoing commitment to enforcing its laws vigorously.

The commission stated that Apple’s App Store policies are unfair to developers

At the heart of the issue is Apple’s App Store, which, according to last year’s allegations by the European Commission, has been playing an unfair game in the music streaming arena. The commission pointed out that Apple’s App Store policies unfairly restrict developers. These rules stop developers from letting users know about alternative purchasing options, which could potentially offer better deals or features.

This case is not just about the fine, substantial as it may be; it’s a reminder of the thin line tech giants must walk when it comes to regulatory compliance. For Apple, known for its strict control over its ecosystem, this could signal a need for a strategic change to ensure its policies align more closely with the EU’s standards – and especially to avoid any future fines.

The fine, expected to be officially announced in the coming month, has yet to elicit a response from either the European Commission or Apple. The company’s journey from here will be closely watched, as it struggles with the challenges of adapting to regulatory demands while maintaining its position as a leader in the industry. This massive $500 million fine may just be one costly reminder in a line of many. Who knows? All we can do is wait and see how Apple deals with this.

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Australian Court Slaps Meta Platforms with $14 Million Fine for Concealing Data Collection Practices

Joane — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 05:28:08 +0000

In a significant blow to Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, an Australian court has ordered the tech giant to pay fines amounting to $20 million ($14 million) for unlawfully acquiring user data through a smartphone application that misleadingly claimed to prioritize user privacy while covertly harvesting personal information.

The Federal Court of Australia also ruled that Meta, along with its subsidiaries Facebook Israel and the now-defunct app Onavo, must bear the legal costs of $400,000 payable to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the body that initiated the civil lawsuit against the company.

The ACCC’s legal action against Meta stemmed from its investigation into the data practices of the social media conglomerate, revealing that the Onavo app, marketed as a tool to protect user privacy, was surreptitiously collecting and mining users’ personal data without proper disclosure or consent.

This landmark ruling by the Australian court sends a stern message to tech companies about the importance of transparency and compliance with privacy regulations. The court’s decision is seen as a significant step towards safeguarding user privacy in the digital era, as it sets a precedent for holding tech giants accountable for their data collection practices.

In response to this case and the growing concerns about digital privacy, the Australian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has unveiled a series of proposed amendments to the Privacy Act. The proposed changes aim to modernize the legislation, bringing it in line with the evolving landscape of digital technology and the need to protect individuals’ personal information from unauthorized exploitation.

The fines and legal costs imposed on Meta Platforms not only serve as a financial penalty but also highlight the importance of transparency and accountability in the tech industry. With governments worldwide increasingly focusing on data protection and privacy concerns, this ruling may prompt other countries to review their own privacy laws and take necessary steps to hold tech giants accountable for mishandling user data.

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Microsoft faces $3 million fine for selling software to Russian companies

Sean — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 11:24:44 +0000

Microsoft has apparently been hit with a sizeable fine worth millions of US Dollars. The company is facing the fine after being caught selling its software to Russian based firms. So here are all the details.

The American tech giant has agreed to pay over 3 million US Dollars to settle a potential civil liability. The brand is being accused of 1,339 sanction violations for selling its products and services to individuals and companies in Russia and other certain other regions. These violations and more than 1,300 cases had taken place between the periods of July 2012 and April 2019. During this time, Microsoft has supposedly sold software licenses, activated software licenses, and related services from its and US and Ireland servers to “Specially Designated Nationals”.

In other words, the company is being hit with the fine for selling to blacklisted regions. These regions includes nations like Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia, and the Crimea region of Ukraine as well. Microsoft and its Ireland and Russia subsidiaries has thus agreed on a settlement sum worth 2.98 million US Dollars with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury following a previous Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) settlement of 624,013 US Dollars.

The fines don’t end there as the BIS later hit the company with a 276,382 US Dollars credit, which brings the net settlement agreement to cross over 3.3 million US Dollars. Interestingly enough, 94 percent of all of these violations were from Russia, accounting for 1,252 out of the 1,339 cases. Meanwhile, 54 of these cases were from Cuba, 30 in Iran, and 3 in Syria.

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Meta faces €265 million fine by Irish data privacy watchdog

Sudhanshu — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 07:52:18 +0000

Meta’s trouble doesn’t show any signs of ending anytime soon. The tech giant recently lost 25% of its market valuation which lead the company to lay off 11,000 of its employees. It has also had many run-ins with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, the latest of which comes from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which has imposed a €265 million fine against the social media giant.

Via Unsplash

Based on the conclusions of an investigation into Meta’s Irish branch, Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, the penalties and a “range of corrective measures” were imposed (MPIL). To determine the cause of a major data breach that affected more than 530 million Facebook users, an investigation was launched in April 2021.

Utilizing flaws in Instagram Contact Importer and Facebook Messenger Contact Importer, the user data was collected throughout 2019. According to Facebook, these flaws were closed in September 2019. However, the DPC’s investigation discovered that the tools did not adhere to the GDPR’s “obligation for data protection by design and default,” as stated in Article 25 of the legislation, at the time the data was scraped.

The DPC decided to fine Meta on Friday, November 25, after finding that the social media company had breached Article 25 on two occasions (paragraphs 1 and 2).

Since the fall of 2021, Meta has been penalized by the Irish DPC four times for GDPR violations totaling €265 million. Including this decision, the DPC has fined Meta and its affiliates a total of €912 million (about US$942 million) over the previous 14 months. Other penalties include a €405 million ($418 million) fine for Instagram’s improper management of minors’ data.

Apple may face over €50 million in fines over Dutch antitrust case

Sean — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 13:05:03 +0000

Apple has just been hit with another 5 million EUR (roughly 5.5 million US Dollars) in fines in the Netherlands. The fine arrives after the company failed to comply with the recently mandated alternative payment system for dating apps.

For those unaware, we had previously reported on the Dutch government mandating the Cupertino based giant to offer other forms of payment that bypassed its App Store. However, it seems like the brand failed to comply in time as it was again hit with the 5 million EUR fine like last time. So far, the iPhone maker has been fined for around 45 million EUR (roughly 49.5 million US Dollars) by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM).

These fines have been stacking up week after week, as Apple continues to delay the changes on its App Store. Previously, the ACM had stated that it would fine the company for 5 million EUR each week, with a maximum fine of up to 50 million EUR. So apparently, it seems like Apple might just exceed the initially stated total fine soon. As per a Reuters report, the fines following the 50 million EUR threshold might be even higher than the original ones.

In other words, we will have to wait and see how the situation pans out for Apple. Notably, the ACM is not happy with Apple’s decision on forcing dating apps to choose between the standard in app purchase system or the new alternative payment platform. It has even stated that the dating apps might be able to offer both option in the future, which has caused these fines.

Google loses antitrust appeal in the EU; needs to pay $2.8 billion fine

Jeet — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 07:32:40 +0000

The European Union’s General Court has ruled that the European Commission was right in fining Google for an antirust breach for which the technology giant was fined 2.42 billion euros, approximately $2.8 billion.

A few years ago, in 2017, EU’s competition watchdog European Commission found that Google had favored its own comparison shopping services and fined the company for breaching antitrust rules. The search engine giant then contested the claims to the second-highest court in the EU and has now lost the appeal.

The court has confirmed that the company will need to pay the fine of 2.42 billion euros. The Alphabet-owned company also has an option to appeal this verdict and take the case forward to the EU’s highest court.

In a press release, the court said: “The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits.”

The company said it made changes in 2017 to comply with the commission’s decision. In a statement, the company said: “Our approach has worked successfully for more than three years, generating billions of clicks for more than 700 comparison shopping services.”

After this anti-trust fine in 2017, the commission followed by two other major antitrust penalties against Google, totaling 8.25 billion euros ($9.5 billion), which the company is appealing. The fines are a drop in the bucket for Google’s parent company which earned $182 billion in revenue just last year.

Facebook fined $70 million for deliberate breach during Giphy acquisition probe

Jeet — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 04:45:35 +0000

Social media giant Facebook has been fined £50 million ($70 million USD) by the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK for purposely concealing information about its Giphy acquisition. The company’s dealings with Giphy were called out by the UK regulators, leading to CMA launching an antitrust probe.

The Competition and Markets Authority had issued an initial enforcement order to Facebook in June last year as it began its investigation into the acquisition deal. The order was aimed to ensure that companies continue to compete as they would in the absence of a merger and it prevents them from integrating further.

As a part of the order, Facebook is legally required to provide regular updates to show that it is complying with the order. But, CMA says that Facebook “significantly limited the scope of those updates” despite repeated warnings.

The regulator also noted that this is the first time a company has been found to have breached an IEO by “consciously refusing” to report all the required information. Further, it added that Facebook’s failure to comply was “deliberate” as the social media company was given multiple warnings.

Joel Bamford, senior director of mergers at the CMA, said: “We warned Facebook that its refusal to provide us with important information was a breach of the order but, even after losing its appeal in two separate courts, Facebook continued to disregard its legal obligations. This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law.”

Separately, the CMA has fined Facebook £500,000 for changing its Chief Compliance Officer on two separate occasions without seeking consent first.

A couple of months ago, the CMA said it had provisionally found Facebook’s purchase of Giphy would harm competition between social media platforms and remove a potential challenger in the display advertising market. It also said that Facebook could be required to unwind the deal, which is reportedly worth $400 million, and sell off Giphy if its concerns are ultimately confirmed.

WhatsApp fined €225 million for breaching EU data privacy rules

Jeet — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 02:38:03 +0000

WhatsApp, the instant messaging platform owned by Facebook, has been fined 225 million euros (approximately $267 million) by a data watchdog in Ireland for breaking the EU data privacy rules. This makes it the largest penalty handed out by the Irish data regulatory over General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) violation and the second-largest in EU.

Data Protection Commission of Ireland says that the Facebook-owned WhatsApp failed to tell its European Union citizens about what the company does with the data collection of the user, including how the details are collected and users, as well as how WhatsApp shares the user data with Facebook.

The Irish authority had originally asked WhatsApp for a €50 million fine for breaking GDPR, but other data protection agencies pushing for a stiffer penalty. Now, the fine levied is more than four times the originally proposed.

In its order, the commission asked WhatsApp to tweak its privacy policies and how it communicates with users in order to make the platform compliant with Europe’s privacy law. This means that the messaging service may need to expand its privacy policy.

WhatsApp has said that the company will be filing an appeal over this verdict. The company’s spokesperson added, “WhatsApp is committed to providing a secure and private service. We have worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive and will continue to do so. We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate.”

The company has revealed on its website that it shares information like phone numbers, transaction data, business interactions, mobile device information, IP addresses, and other information with Facebook. The firm emphasizes that it does not share personal conversations, location data, or call logs.

Google hit with $593 million fine in France over copyright issues

Jeet — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 04:27:26 +0000

The antitrust regulator in France has fined the tech giant Google around $593 million and has given the company two months to come up with proposals on how to pay publishers for their content or face more punishment.

In a statement, the regulator said that Google had disregarded several injunctions related to the tech company’s negotiations with French news publishers. Isabelle de Silva, Chief of Antitrust Agency, said: “When the regulator imposes obligations for a company, it must comply scrupulously, in both the spirit and letter. In this instance, this was unfortunately not the case.”

France’s Competition Authority said that Google had breached an April 2020 ruling that ordered the company to negotiate “in good faith” licensing deals with publishers and news agencies for any reuse of copyrighted content.

The tech giant has been fined €500 million ($593 million) over its failure to comply. If the search giant does not present compensation offers to publishers within the next two months, it faces additional penalties of up to €900,000 ($1.1 million) per day.

It is the largest-ever fine imposed by France’s competition watchdog for a company’s failure to adhere to one of its rulings. It’s the latest development in an ongoing copyright battle between tech giants like Google and Facebook and news publishers.

Google said that it was “very disappointed” by Tuesday’s decision. The spokesperson for the company added: “We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement and the reality of how news works on our platforms. To date, Google is the only company to have announced agreements on neighboring rights. We are also about to finalize an agreement with AFP that includes a global licensing agreement, as well as the remuneration of their neighboring rights for their press publications.”

Earlier this year, in January, Google agreed to a major digital copyright deal with French publishers. As part of that deal, it would negotiate individual licenses with members of France’s press alliance for rights and access to a new service called News Showcase.

However, France’s competition agency took issue with this, saying it did not include a discussion on remuneration for current uses of content covered by “neighboring rights” for the press. It also added that Google restricted the scope of talks with the media by refusing to include the use of press images.

The European Union had overhauled its copyright laws in 2019, making platforms responsible for copyright infringements committed by their users. The new rules also require search engines and social media platforms to share revenue with publishers if their content is displayed.

Alibaba fined $2.75 billion in China for violating anti-monopoly rules

Jeet — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 05:27:14 +0000

Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd, the tech giant in China, has been slapped with a record 18 billion yuan, approximately $2.75 billion, after a probe related to anti-monopoly found that the company abused its dominant market position for years.

The State Administration for Market Regulation in China said that it had determined that Alibaba, which is listed in New York and Hong Kong, had been “abusing market dominance” since 2015 by preventing its merchants from using other online e-commerce platforms.

Alibaba

This practice violates China’s antimonopoly law by hindering the free circulation of goods and infringing on the business interests of merchants, the regulator added. Apart from the highest-ever antitrust penalty globally, the company has been asked to make “thorough rectifications” to strengthen internal compliance and protect consumer rights.

The fine imposed on the Chinese tech giant accounts for about 4 percent of Alibaba’s domestic revenues in 2019, reports Reuters. It comes amid a crackdown on technology conglomerates and indicates China’s antitrust enforcement on internet platforms has entered a new era.

Alibaba came under intense scrutiny in its home country after the company’s billionaire founder Jack Ma’s stinging public criticism of the country’s regulatory system in October last year. A month later, authorities scuttled a planned $37 billion IPO by Ant Group, Alibaba’s internet finance arm, which was set to be the world’s biggest ever.

In December last year, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced its antitrust probe into the company. After this record fine, Ant Group still needs to agree to a regulatory-driven revamp that could significantly cut its valuations and rein in some of its freewheeling businesses.