How many penalties have been imposed for breach of data protection?

Have you ever wanted to know how many penalties are imposed for breach of data protection? Of which amounts? Which country fines the most?

Thanks to this website, we can keep track of the list of all sanctions for breach of data protection (updated as of 07/24/2023): 

Penalties imposed for breach of data protection: Total collected and the highest fines

Since July 2018, when the first €400,000 fine was imposed for breach of data protection, the total number of fines and money collected has never ceased to grow. Until this july, the accumulated total amount collected over these 3 years was (wait for it…) €4,047.7M, over a total of 1.749 fines, representing an average penalty of approximately €2.31M per fine (a totally misleading figure because most are relatively low).

If you look at this by month, you can see that the month with the highest collection was last May, when €1,208M was collected over 37 fines, mainly due to the €1.200 million fine that the Irish Agency imposed on Meta.

Total fines by country

Regarding total sanctions collected by country, the countries to have collected the most, obviously due to the aforementioned fines, are Ireland (2,511M) and Luxembourg (746M), over a total of 26 and 31 fines, respectively. The third is France, which has collected 338 million euros but, unlike the previous countries, has collected them over a total of 37 fines. Spain is in 6th position with €60.8M euros collected.

Otherwise, Spain is the country with the highest number of sanctions imposed, with a total of 702 fines! This means that a lot of small fines are imposed. The second country in number of fines is Italy, which, as said, has a total of 284 fines, which is a difference of more than 400 sanctions! Germany stands third with 160 fines and 55.1M euros collected.

Penalties imposed for breach of data protection: Highest fines by sector and individual fines

Finally, the most fined sectors are, above all, the “media and telecoms” and “industry and commerce” sectors. The first represents large technology companies such as Meta or Google, while the second is mainly represented by Amazon:

Finally, 4 of the 5 highest individual fines were imposed by the Irish agency on Meta. The other belongs to Amazon, imposed by the Luxembourg agency.

If you are curious and want to know more about this list or any other topic, do not hesitate to contact us!

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