Data protection authorities impose some of the highest fines in their history

10/02/2022

The imposition of high fines, such as those imposed by authorities in Germany and France, is also becoming a reality in our country. Interestingly, however, high fines have not been for violations of the GDPR, but for unsolicited advertising. During the past year, the Czech Personal Data Protection Office ("the Office") fined several companies a total of CZK 3,111,000 (approximately EUR 122,000) for sending spam messages to data mailboxes. Previous year, the Office fined a used car dealer CZK 6,000,000 (approximately EUR 235,000) for sending its commercial messages to up to 500,000 email addresses, the vast majority of which were unsolicited advertisements. The Office justified the amount of the fine in the dealer's case on the basis of the increased social harm of the infringement in view of the entrepreneur's long-standing and professional activity in the industry, the far-reaching system errors and the gross invasion of privacy of some recipients. The Office also took into account the high number of recipients of the unsolicited commercial communication and the so-called repetition of addresses. This means that commercial communications are sent repeatedly to the same person.