Austrian Post ordered to pay damages after data scandal

Austrian Post was ordered to pay damages for unlawful data processing. Following the data scandal uncovered by an Austrian investigative journal in January 2019, the first ruling against Austrian Post has now been handed down.

The Feldkirch Regional Court ordered Austrian Post to pay the plaintiff 800 euros in damages. The plaintiff, a lawyer from Voralberg, had sued the company for EUR 2,500 in damages after it became known that Swiss Post had stored data on the party affinity of around 2.2 million Austrians (http://www.2b-advice.com/GmbH-de/Nachrichten/n/11495/at-sie-sehen-aus-wie-ein-fpoe-waehler ). The plaintiff was also affected by this. The data records were sold to interested parties so that they could Advertising could send out. The criticism of this procedure concerned the legality of the Processing special categories of personal data, including data on political opinions. In order to be allowed to process these, a Consent of the data subject or another legal basis. Swiss Post was unable to provide any such legal basis and denied any unlawful data processing.

The Regional Court has now determined that data on party affiliation is indeed personal data special categories. The fact that Swiss Post processes this data without Consent of the data subject is unlawful and justifies compensation for damages. As the data of the data subject was not sold, the court deemed damages of 800 euros to be appropriate.

This ruling is landmark for two reasons.

Firstly, non-material damages were awarded for the first time. The damages are intended to compensate for the inconvenience suffered by the Affected parties has suffered as a result of the unlawful data storage.

Furthermore, the consequences for the postal service could be devastating. In theory, each of the 2.2 million affected individuals has a comparable claim for damages, which could be significantly higher depending on what happened to the data.

The ruling is not yet final, as both parties have filed appeals. However, this in no way diminishes the lessons that should be learned from this case.

from C. Dorner

Source: addendum.org/data-trading/compensation/