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Another week and yet another couple of pesky cold callers face fines from the UK's data privacy watchdog for "Bombarding" unsuspecting households with marketing messages about home improvements. Poxell, which specializes in energy saving products including double glazing and resin driveways, is being penalized to the tune of £150,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office for making 2.6 million marketing calls between March and July 2022, resulting in 413 complaints to the data regulator.
Food delivery company HelloFresh is nursing a £140,000 fine by Britain's data privacy watchdog after a probe found it had dispatched upwards of a staggering 79 million spam email and one million texts in just seven months. The Information Commissioner's Office says the company claimed messages were based on an opt-in statement, yet this statement did not include any reference to the sending of marketing messages via text.
NHS Fife is on the wrong end of a stern ticking off by Britain's data regulator after it made a howling privacy error that aided an as yet unknown person who had entered a hospital ward only to walk off with data on 14 patients. Due to a "Lack of checks and formal processes" the unauthorized individual who was not employed by the health service was "Handed" a document containing the personal data of 14 patients, and even helped administer care to one, the ICO investigation found.
China's Cyberspace Administration has punished Alibaba-owned search engine Quark and livestreaming platform NetEase for content it deemed vulgar. Quark was fined ¥500,000 and NetEase was required to suspend updates on a channel specializing in dancing content for seven days.
Infosec in brief The fallout from the exploitation of bugs in Progress Software's MOVEit file transfer software continues, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission now investigating the matter, and lots of affected parties seeking compensation. Per the disclosure, it received a subpoena from the SEC on October 2, in which the Commission asked for "Various documents and information relating to the MOVEit Vulnerability."
Facebook's parent company Meta has been fined a record $1.3 billion by European Union data protection regulators for transferring the personal data of users in the region to the U.S. In a binding decision taken by the European Data Protection Board, the social media giant has been ordered to bring its data transfers into compliance with the GDPR and delete unlawfully stored and processed data within six months. Meta has been given five months to suspend any future transfer of Facebook users' data to the U.S. Instagram and WhatsApp, which are also owned by the company, are not subject to the order.
Popular short-form video hosting service TikTok has been fined €5 million by the French data protection watchdog for breaking cookie consent rules, making it the latest platform to face similar penalties after Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft since 2020. The regulator said it conducted several audits between May 2020 and June 2022, finding that the ByteDance-owned company did not offer a straightforward option to refuse all cookies as opposed to just one click for accepting them.
The Irish Data Protection Commission has fined Meta Platforms €390 million over its handling of user data for serving personalized ads in what could be a major blow to its ad-fueled business model. To that end, the privacy regulator has ordered Meta Ireland to pay two fines - a €210 million fine over violations of the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation related to Facebook, and a €180 million for similar violations in Instagram.
Ireland's Data Protection Commission has levied fines of €265 million against Meta Platforms for failing to safeguard the personal data of more than half a billion users of its Facebook service, ramping up privacy enforcement against U.S. tech firms. The fines follow an inquiry initiated by the European regulator on April 14, 2021, close on the heels of a leak of a "Collated dataset of Facebook personal data that had been made available on the internet."