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The Cnil imposes a fine of 125,000 euros on Cityscoot

The self-service scooter company Cityscoot was fined 125,000 euros for having geolocated its customers “almost permanently”, announced this Tuesday March 28 the policeman of the private life of the French, the Cnil

Too much follow-up. The Cityscoot company was sentenced by the Cnil to pay a fine of 125,000 euros for having excessively geolocated its customers.

The French start-up offers more than 7,000 electric scooters, available on the street for short-term rental, in Paris and Nice but also on the other side of the Alps in Italy, in the cities of Milan and Turin.

The National Commission for Computing and Liberties (Cnil) found during checks that the company had “disproportionately invaded the privacy of its customers by geolocating them almost permanently”.

“During the rental of a scooter by an individual, the company collected data relating to the geolocation of the vehicle every 30 seconds. In addition, the company kept the history of these journeys”, explains the Commission in a press release.

Cityscoot challenged this decision and indicated that it was “thinking” about action before the Council of State. “We regret that the CNIL decided to sanction Cityscoot despite our explanations and without taking our arguments into account,” said a spokesperson for the start-up.

Cityscoot rejects CNIL accusations

Cityscoot collected this data to then process traffic violations, customer complaints, calls to the support service in the event of a fall, for example, and the management of claims and thefts, according to the CNIL.

However, such a practice is “very intrusive in the privacy of users, insofar as it is likely to reveal their movements, their places of attendance or even all the stops made during a journey”, explains the Cnil .

The Cnil affirms that the company “could offer an identical service without geolocating its customers almost permanently”.

In 2022, the Commission had already sentenced Ubeeqo, a self-service car rental company (subsidiary of Europcar), to a fine of 175,000 euros for the same reasons.

Cityscoot, like Ubeeqo, “failed to the principle of data minimization”, the latter “must be adequate, relevant and not excessive with regard to the purpose for which they are collected and used”, according to the Cnil.

The amount of the penalty, of 125,000 euros, takes into account the turnover of the company, the seriousness of the breaches noted but also the measures taken by the company to remedy them.

Written by Mark Antoine

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