Uber hit with a nearly $1 billion fine for automatically deactivating drivers in Europe - Engadget

A Dutch data regulatory authority said that Uber has to pay 824.9 million euros for violating the GDPR.

Uber has allegedly violated the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) again, but this time to the tune of a 824.9 million euro, or $966 million, fine. The Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), or the Dutch Data Protection Authority, hit Uber with the massive fine, accusing the company of automatically deactivating driver accounts between 2018 and 2022 without human intervention.

According to the Dutch regulatory agency, Uber has deprived its drivers of income through fully automated decisions, violating the GDPR in the process. The investigation was launched after 171 French drivers reported these decisions to a local human rights organization, which eventually led to the AP taking over the case since Uber's European headquarters are located in The Netherlands.

"From one moment to the next, they no longer had any income through Uber," Monique Verdier, deputy chair of the AP, said of the drivers who initiated the complaint. "A computer should not make decisions on its own that have major consequences for you."

The AP has previously fined Uber three times, including once in 2018 for 600,000 euros, or $701,000, and again in 2023 for 10 million euros, or $11.6 million. Uber's previous record-high fine came in 2024 when the AP issued a 290 million euro, or around $339 million, penalty for improperly transferring personal data of European drivers to the US. This time around, the AP said that the 824.9 million euro fine was calculated as the maximum penalty that's derived from four percent of a company's worldwide annual turnover. According to the AP, Uber has already filed an appeal against the fine. We reached out to Uber for their comment on the fine and will update the story when we hear back.