Neowin

Shell Energy was fined £1.4 million by the regulator Ofcom for not properly informing customers that they were out of contract or that their contract was coming to an end. The issue is now resolved.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has today published its final decision on its inquiry into TikTok on how it handles the data of young users and has issued a fine of €345 million ($368m).

Google was fined after failing to remove an alleged fake news video about the Russia-Ukraine conflict from YouTube, a Russian district court ruled after the company broke its administrative laws.

TikTok may face another fine by the European Union as the regulator's recent investigation revealed that TikTok had breached child privacy laws and mishandled data of teens between 13 and 17.

Spotify has fallen foul of the EU's General Data Protection Regulations and has been fined SEK 58 million (equivalent to $5.4 million) by a Swedish regulator due to how it handles personal data.

Hacker Gary Bowser from the infamous Team-Xecuter Nintendo piracy group has been released early from prison. However, he will likely be paying off fines to Nintendo for the rest of his life.

The fine from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office says that TikTok allowed over 1.4 million kids under 13 years of age to access its app, in violation of TikTok's own terms of service.

Russian courts have recently issued a $57,000 fine to Amazon-owned Twitch for failing to remove content about its military campaign in Ukraine which it reportedly says is falsified.

Meta has been hit with a €5.5 million fine for violating GDPR rules with its WhatsApp messenger. A complainant said users were forced to agree to data processing to use WhatsApp and this broke rules.

Meta has said it will appeal against two fines from the Irish DPC which total €390 million. It was fined because of GDPR violations which were raised by two complainants in May 2018.

Tesla has been fined $2.2 million by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission. The regulator says the company mislead customers through false advertising that exaggerated its cars' capabilities.

Our latest edition of Microsoft Weekly covers a quieter week where we learned about a couple more Windows bugs along with a few patches, a fine on Microsoft Bing, and some Teams and Excel updates.

Microsoft has been fined €60 million for not giving Bing users a way to reject cookies. French data protection agency CNIL said Microsoft should get consent to use ad fraud detection cookies too.

Google and iHeartMedia have reached a settlement with the FTC after the two were accused of paying radio hosts for endorsements of the Pixel 4 even though the endorsers hadn't used the phone.

Facebook's parent company Meta has been hit by a fine of €265 million from the Data Protection Commission (Ireland) for violating people's privacy. There are still 13 outstanding inquiries pending.

Google has been handed a $113 million fine by India's antitrust watchdog for forcing consumers and developers to use only its own billing mechanisms for purchases from the Google Play Store.

The provisional views of the UK's Information Commissioner's Office suggest TikTok has fallen short of giving adequate protection to children under data privacy laws. It could face a £27 million fine.

Google has lost its appeal in the EU General Court for a case that required it to pay a €4.34 billion fine. Although this fine has been slightly reduced now, it is still its biggest penalty in the EU.

Meta and Google have collectively been fined $72 million in South Korea for not clearly informing users prior to collecting their data to analyze their interests and behaviors to display custom ads.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has hit Meta's Instagram with a €405 million fine for exposing e-mail addresses and phone numbers of under-18s. It's believed to have affected millions of kids.

EU antitrust regulators have decided not to appeal Qualcomm's victory against the €997 million ($991 million) fine it received back in 2018 for paying Apple to use its chips in iPhones and iPads.

Responding to a ruling issued last year, Google has agreed to pay a $60 million fine in Australia for misleading customers about its data collection practices when it comes to your location history.

Samsung has been fined $14 million for misleading advertisements about seven Galaxy phones being water-resistant. The phones were damaged after being used in swimming pools and ocean water.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has fined Nvidia for not telling investors that their rise in revenue in 2018 was due to cryptomining interest rather than its gaming business.

Former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith has been sentenced to over five years in prison and a $100,000 fine for helping North Korea in leveraging cryptocurrencies to evade U.S. sanctions.

Intel has seen a major victory in court as a 2009 European Commission ruling and a $1.2 billion fine against it for anticompetitive behavior and practices to stifle AMD has been overturned.

Facebook has been hit with a £50.5 million fine by the Competition and Markets Authority for failing to comply with the regulator's initial enforcement order in relation to the Giphy acquisition.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission has issued a €225 million fine to WhatsApp for violating GDPR rules. The DPC also said that WhatsApp will have to change its processes to align with GDPR.

TikTok has been fined a huge sum of money by the Dutch DPA, a sum total of €750,000, for not appropriately communicating its app's data privacy and usage policy, in accordance with the EU's GDPR.

Google has agreed to pay a €1.1 million fine in France as a result of an investigation into its hotel rating system, which was deemed to be misleading as it didn't follow the country's standards.

The EU Commission has fined Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, and other publishers for geo-restricting their games inside the EU Digital Single Market where these restrictions are not allowed.

Twitter has been fined €450,000 in Ireland for failing to notify privacy regulators of a data breach in 2019 and for lack of proper documentation as required by the European Union's GDPR.

Apple has been fined a whopping $12 million by an Italian regulatory authority for making misleading claims regarding water resistance in various iPhone models ranging from iPhone 8 to 11.

Sony Europe has been issued a hefty $2.4 million fine by the Australian federal court. The penalty has been charged on the basis that Sony misled customers about their rights when demanding refunds.

Google is set to start its appeal against the European Commission after it was handed a fine back in 2017 for using its dominance in search to allegedly crowd out rival shopping comparison firms.

The UK's ICO has announced that Facebook has agreed to pay £500,000 for violating the Data Privacy Act 1998 with regards to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook has not accepted liability though.

The digital regulator, Ofcom, has fined Giffgaff £1.4 million after it found that customers had been collectively overcharged by about £2.9 million following a billing error on Giffgaff's behalf.