Data Protection Commission announces decision in Twitter inquiry

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has today announced a conclusion to a GDPR investigation it conducted into Twitter International Company. The DPC’s investigation commenced in January, 2019 following receipt of a breach notification from Twitter and the DPC has found that Twitter infringed Article 33(1) and 33(5) of the GDPR in terms of a failure to notify the breach on time to the DPC and a failure to adequately document the breach. The DPC has imposed an administrative fine of €450,000 on Twitter as an effective, proportionate and dissuasive measure.

The draft decision in this inquiry, having been submitted to other Concerned Supervisory Authorities under Article 60 of the GDPR in May of this year, was the first one to go through the Article 65 (“dispute resolution”) process since the introduction of the GDPR and was the first Draft Decision in a “big tech” case on which all EU supervisory authorities were consulted as Concerned Supervisory Authorities.

The European Data Protection Board has published the Article 65 decision and the final decision on its website here.