Amazon was fined EUR 746 million ($880 million) by Luxembourg authorities over allegations it flouted the EU’s information safety guidelines, the web retail big mentioned Friday.

The high quality was issued July 16 by the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection following its willpower that “Amazon’s processing of personal data did not comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR),” Amazon mentioned in a securities submitting.

“We believe the CNPD’s decision to be without merit and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter,” the corporate added, utilizing the group’s French acronym.

The high quality was believed to be the most important ever for a knowledge safety violation for the reason that passage of the regulation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) doc supplied no particulars, however Amazon was sued by a European client group claiming private information was collected for advert concentrating on with out permission.

The Luxembourg company confirmed that it made a ruling this month on Amazon however declined to elaborate, saying its investigations are confidential.

It was the most recent case of US tech companies being hit with violations of the landmark GDPR.

French authorities fined Amazon EUR 35 million final yr for failing to observe legal guidelines on browser “cookies” that monitor customers. Google was hit with a high quality of EUR 100 million for related violations.

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Under the GDPR, which got here into impact in 2018, web customers have a wider vary of rights referring to their information.

Regulators have been armed with new powers together with the flexibility to high quality companies as much as 4 p.c of their annual international turnover.

The GDPR has resulted in fines imposed not solely on know-how companies however entrepreneurs, information brokers, Austria’s postal service and even the Spanish soccer affiliation, La Liga.

Amazon made the disclosure as a part of its quarterly replace which confirmed income jumped 48 p.c from a yr in the past to $7.8 billion and revenues elevated 27 p.c to $113.1 billion within the April-June interval.