LinkedIn Fined More Than $300 Million in Ireland Over Personal Data Processing

Ireland's data-protection watchdog fined LinkedIn 310 million euros ($334.3 million), saying the Microsoft-owned career platform's personal-data processing breached strict European Union data-privacy and security legislation. From a report: The Irish Data Protection Commission in 2018 launched a probe into LinkedIn's processing of users' personal data for behavioral analysis and targeted advertising after its French equivalent flagged a complaint it received from a non-profit organization. Irish officials raised concerns on the lawfulness, fairness and transparency of the practice, saying Thursday that LinkedIn was in breach of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation.

"The lawfulness of processing is a fundamental aspect of data protection law and the processing of personal data without an appropriate legal basis is a clear and serious violation of a data subjects' fundamental right to data protection," said Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the Irish Data Protection Commission. In their decision, Irish officials said LinkedIn wasn't sufficiently informing users when seeking their consent to process third-party data for behavioral analysis and targeted advertising and ordered the platform to bring its processing into compliance.

Where are these commercials?

[Teun]

I've been on Linkedin for many years although I hardly ever use it for anything more than adding the occasional new connection.
So far I've never seen any commercials on it but I do notice since a few months they are more aggressively pushing their services via emails.
One of these days I might block their mail that says LInkedin is better on the app.
I don't use their app but read Linkedin via Firefox that includes uBlock Origin.

Re:Where are these commercials?

[sodul]

The LinkedIn post Microsoft acquisition is horrendous. I've been disabling the notifications left and right, there are pretty much dozens of settings for notifications and they are new settings on regular basis. The app on my phone nags me day and night about the most trivial things.

The GitHub acquisition was not as bad, but for LinkedIn, they tried to turn it into FaceBook and I guess they succeeded in making it a barely usable place with constant nags.

I'm only keeping my account because they have, effectively, a near monopoly for professional networking, but now I avoid it as much as I can.

Re:

[pauljlucas]

The app on my phone nags me day and night about the most trivial things.

The notification I don't get is the one where it tells you how many impressions your post has gotten. I guess that information should available for those who want it, but you should have to request it proactively. Seriously, who wants to be notified about this?

Unfortunately, last I checked, it was tied to the same preference setting that notified you if somebody commented on one of your posts (that at least I do want to know about).

Data breach 2001 including name and salaries

[will4]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/q... [forbes.com]

- 92% of users data leaked - 700 million users
- phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation data,
- inferred salaries

So what need does linkedin have for estimated salaries? What people, companies or AI is being trained on 700 million user's personal, professional and estimated financial information?

Who is that being sold to?

And how many government court ordered or not court ordered data requests does LinkedIn provide every year?

Re:

[pauljlucas]

I think you replied to the wrong person since what you wrote is a non sequitur to what I wrote.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving cancer...

[shanen]

As in corporate cancer, but actually, I'm going for funny because there are LOTS of corporate cancers that abuse personal information in even worse ways and which have earned much larger fines. Or maybe Ireland deserves the laugh because of the race-to-the-bottom low-tax strategies that attracted so many "fine" corporate citizens to the lovely isle?

Me? LinkedIn is my best channel for being recruited for scams by disguised fake headhunters. Can't prove it, but I suspect some of them are Russian and Chinese fronts. Or maybe fronts for Mossad or Langley... Not interested in any of the above. (Until they make me an offer I can't refuse?)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe bad, Microsoft good

What a bizarro world you live in.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[pauljlucas]

How easy or difficult it is to follow rules is orthogonal to how strict the enforcer is of said rules (or how severe the punishment is for breaking said rules).

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[pauljlucas]

I never said anything about how effective severe punishments were. All I said was that it's orthogonal.

Re:

[mjwx]

Yeah, the GDPR's strict, as in how your typical high-school art teacher is strict. There's also a tonne of freely available info, guidelines, etc., on how to comply with the GDPR. It's not that difficult.

The GDPR is only strict if you're doing something wrong... I suspect that's why you used the teacher analogy.

Typically when dealing with GDPR violations you're usually told to stop and only fined if you don't unless it's a particularly egregious violation (i.E. obviously intentional).