• Uber has been issued a fine of €290 million by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA).
• It is the biggest fine that Uber has received to date.
• The fine is related to Uber reportedly sharing data with the US, which infringes GDPR.

Another week, another fine for a big tech company. This time it is Uber, which has been issued a fine by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA).

The DPA has issued Uber a fine of €290 million for the ridesharing platform’s reported handling of driver data. The regulator says that Uber has been sending European driver data to the United States, which infringes upon General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“The Dutch DPA found that Uber collected, among other things, sensitive information of drivers from Europe and retained it on servers in the US. It concerns account details and taxi licences, but also location data, photos, payment details, identity documents, and in some cases even criminal and medical data of drivers,” the regulator explained in a blog post.

“For a period of over 2 years, Uber transferred those data to Uber’s headquarters in the US, without using transfer tools. Because of this, the protection of personal data was not sufficient,” it added.

The Uber financial penalty also represents the biggest that the ridesharing platform has received to date.

“All DPAs in Europe calculate the amount of fines for businesses in the same manner. Those fines amount to a maximum of 4% of the worldwide annual turnover of a business. Uber had a worldwide turnover of around 34.5 billion euro in 2023. Uber has indicated its intent to object to the fine,” the regulator explained in terms calculation of the fine that was issued.

As Engadget points out, this is also the third fine that the DPA has imposed on Uber. The previous fines were imposed in 2018 and 2023, for €600 000 and €10 million respectively.

Uber challenged the latter, which is still pending, so we will likely see the platform do the same for the massive €290 million one, although it has not issued an official statement on the matter at the time of writing.