Background information

• Cross-border case
• Legal Reference(s): Article 22 (Automated individual decision making, including profiling) and Article 13 (Information to be provided where personal data are collected from the data subject)
• Decision: Administrative fine
• Key words: Automated decision making, profiling and online tracking, fines

Summary of the Decision

The Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), the Dutch data protection authority, imposes a fine of EUR 824 990 000 on Uber. The reason for this is that the AP has ruled that Uber made fully automated decisions about drivers. In case of suspicions of fraud or customer reviews that were too low, drivers' accounts were automatically temporarily deactivated or, in case of persistent low customer reviews, permanently deactivated. As a result, their income was lost via Uber during the deactivation.

Origin of the case

Complaints from 171 French Uber drivers, submitted through the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (LDH) to the French Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), led to the investigation. As Uber’s European headquarters are in the Netherlands, the case was handled by the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), under the GDPR One-Stop-Shop procedure. The case concerned incidents between 2018 and 2022.

Key Findings

According to the AP, Uber has violated the prohibition of fully automated decision-making under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The AP also found that Uber did not sufficiently inform drivers about automatic decision-making. Uber has now stopped the violations.

Decision

At the moment, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) imposed an administrative fine of EUR 824 990 000 on Uber for unlawful automated decision-making and insufficient information about profiling. Uber has appealed the fine, and there is no final judicial decision yet.

For further information: 

• Uber fined nearly 825 million euros for automated driver blocking