An Irish regulator that helps oversee data privacy in the European Union said on Thursday it has fined professional networking platform LinkedIn 310 million euros ($335 million) for breaching users’ personal data for targeted advertising. The Data Protection Commission (DPC) issued the Microsoft-owned website its first EU fine, saying that “the consent obtained by LinkedIn was not freely given”.

Targeted advertising provides users with personalized ads based on their personal information.

Regulators around the world, especially the EU, have been trying for years to regulate the tech giants on data protection and other issues, especially unfair competition.

The DPC told AFP it had given LinkedIn three months to bring its processing into line with the EU’s strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), launched in 2018 to protect European consumers from personal data breaches.

“Processing personal data without an appropriate lawful basis is a clear and serious breach of data subjects’ fundamental right to data protection,” said DPC Head of Communications Graham Doyle.

LinkedIn said in a statement on Thursday that while it believes it has “complied” with the GDPR, the group is “working to ensure” its practices comply with the ruling.

Technical fines

Ireland is home to the European headquarters of several tech giants, including Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook parent Meta.

In 2018, a French association that defends internet users against digital surveillance by tech giants or states — “La Quadrature du Net” — filed five collective complaints against LinkedIn, but also against Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, accusing -i that they illegally exploit the personal data of their users without their consent.

The complaints, which at the time included the names of almost 12,000 people, were initially lodged with CNIL, the French data protection agency, before being transferred to the Irish regulator.

In a statement on Thursday, La Quadrature du Net welcomed the decision but said the time it took the regulator to issue the fine was a “sign of the failures in the European system”.

Ireland’s regulator has levied a series of hefty fines against tech companies as the EU seeks to rein in big tech firms on privacy, competition, misinformation and taxation.

In September, it fined Meta 91 million euros for failing to implement adequate security measures to protect users’ password data and for taking too long to alert the regulator to the issue.

It came after the European Commission won two major legal victories in separate cases that left Apple and Google owed billions of euros.

At the same time, an EU court threw out a €1.49 billion fine imposed by Brussels against Google for abusing its dominant position in online advertising.

In the United States, the US Consumer Protection Agency last year ordered Microsoft to pay $20 million to settle lawsuits for collecting personal data from minors registered on the Xbox online gaming platform without informing their parents .

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