Penalty against hotel

Penalty against hotel

A hotel in Romania’s capital Bucharest has been fined €15,000 for processing data improperly.

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To ensure that only authorized persons consume breakfast, the hotel maintains a list of overnight guests. At the entrance to the dining room, a staff member stands and marks those people who have already entered.

Such a list was photographed by persons external to the company and subsequently published on the Internet. The list contained the personal data of 46 guests. It is not known what data records the list contained, but based on the purpose of the operation, it can be assumed that the guest’s first and last name, room number, and day of arrival and departure were noted. It is possible that the date of birth was also cited.

The hotel itself reported the incident to the Romanian data protection authority.

In the course of the investigation, the supervisory authority found that the hotel had taken inadequate technical and organizational measures. The data protection officer would not have ensured that employees only process personal data in accordance with legal requirements. Therefore, the large fine was imposed.

Conclusion

After the first fine in Romania became known just a few days ago, the authority immediately published another fine. Especially the amount of the fine is surprising. The hotel reported the data breach in a timely manner. Furthermore, the number of people affected was small and it can be assumed that no sensitive data (e.g. residential address) was published.

It turns out that the GDPR is handled differently by the EU members. For example, in one case of systematic employee monitoring, the French authority imposed a fine of “only” €20,000, even though the company in question was known to be a repeat offender.

While in the first year after the introduction of the GDPR only a few, rather smaller penalties were imposed, significantly more penalties have become public in the last weeks and months. On the one hand, the authorities were lenient at the beginning, and on the other hand, long processing times meant that the procedures took a long time. Entrepreneurs must therefore not take data protection lightly. For efficient implementation of data protection in your company, easyGDPR is the means to an end. At the beginning, you will receive an up-to-date data protection status for your company. After that, you can systematically define all data processing procedures in your company with a click of the mouse. easyGDPR automatically creates the mandatory processing directory from this. The program covers not only traditional data protection but also cybersecurity. This is the best way to protect yourself from cybercriminals and protect your trade secrets.

Entscheidungsdatum:
02.07.2019

Land:
Romania

Art des Verstoßes:
Illegal data processing

Betroffene Datensätze:
46

Waren sensible Daten betroffen?:
No

verhängte Geldstrafe:
€ 15,000,-

Quelle:
Press release of the Romanian Data Protection Authority (English)