Lithuanian authorities have fined online second-hand marketplace Vinted nearly 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million) for infringing its users’ personal data rights, the Baltic country’s data protection watchdog said Wednesday.
The Vilnius-headquartered company told AFP it will appeal the penalty.
Clients in France — Vinted’s largest market by number of customers — and Poland had lodged a number of complaints against the platform from 2020 onwards.
These complaints, alleging that the company had not properly implemented user requests to delete or access their personal data, were forwarded onto Lithuania’s State Data Protection Inspectorate (SDPI).
After an investigation, the SDPI ruled that Vinted had infringed several articles of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Among other breaches, the SDPI found Vinted had infringed on the principles of accountability, lawfulness, fairness and transparency enshrined in the GDPR.
“We fundamentally disapprove of this decision,” Vinted told AFP.
The company added that it believes the ruling has “no legal basis” and sets “a new precedent that goes beyond both current legislation and industry practice”.
When deciding on the size of the 2,385,276-euro fine, the SDPI took into account Vinted’s cross-border scope, the fact that the breaches affected a large number of users and took place over a long period of time.
Vinted’s “improper implementation” of data protection principles “negatively affected the ability of users of the platform to exercise other rights” under the GDPR, the SDPI added.
Finally, the SDPI said that the company could not demonstrate it had taken action to improve user access to their personal data, and did not do enough to ensure “implementation of the principle of accountability”.
Vinted was founded in Vilnius in 2008 by Lithuanian entrepreneurs Justas Janauskas and Milda Mitkute.
Users can sell their second-hand goods — notably used clothing and accessories — by listing them on the platform, accessed either by the company’s mobile application or by web browser.
The company claims to have over 100 million users worldwide, and in 2023 turned a profit for the first time in its history.
It employs more than 2,000 people, the majority of whom are based in Lithuania.