Austrian Post fined for selling customer data

Austrian Post has been ordered to pay €18 million for collecting and selling mailers’ perceived political preferences.

The Austrian Data Protection Authority decided on the administrative penalty after finding that the postal service had violated privacy regulations, the Justice Ministry announced in a press release.

In January, the investigative journalism platform Addendum reported that Austrian Post was selling the names, addresses, ages and genders of about 3 million customers to marketing companies.

Employees of Austrian Post even made educated guesses about the political affinities of 2.2 million people who sent mail and sold that information to parties in search of new members. Austrian Post’s direct-mailings division generates annual revenues of about €200 million.

Following the report, representatives had announced that the postal service would delete its database of the likely leanings of about 2.2 million customers. At the time, Austrian Post had pledged to restructure its entire database “along new lines.”

Via DW