First fine imposed by the Polish privacy watchdog
The President of the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) imposed its first fine for the amount of PLN 943 000 (around €220 000) for the failure to fulfil the information obligation.
The decision of the UODO’s President concerned the proceedings related to the activity of a company which processed the data subjects’ data obtained from publicly available sources, inter alia from the Central Electronic Register and Information on Economic Activity, and processed the data for commercial purposes. The authority verified incompliance with the information obligation in relation to natural persons conducting business activity – entrepreneurs who are currently conducting such activity or have suspended it, as well as entrepreneurs who conducted such activity in the past.
The controller fulfilled the information obligation by providing the information required under Art. 14 (1) – (3) of the GDPR only in relation to the persons whose e-mail addresses it had at its disposal. In case of the remaining persons the controller failed to comply with the information obligation – as it explained in the course of the proceedings – due to high operational costs. Therefore, it presented the information clause only on its website. In the opinion of the President of the Personal Data Protection Office, such action was insufficient.
