Geolocated customers every thirty seconds: this data collection by the Cityscoot company has just been declared illegal by the Cnil (National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties), which imposed a fine of 125,000 euros on the electric scooter rental company. The Commission wanted to make this sentence public, through a press release published on its website.
“Very intrusive” practice
But in the eyes of the CNIL, the collection of this data is not essential for the operation of the company and the service provided to the customer. However, according to the GDPR, the European regulation for the protection of personal data, any company has a duty to minimize the data collected.
Finally, the Commission specifies that these data were transmitted to Google “for analysis”, without the customers being informed and without having given their consent. According to the Cnil press release, Cityscoot has assured that it will put an end to this illegal data collection.
“We regret that the Cnil has decided to sanction Cityscoot despite our explanations and without taking our arguments into account. Contrary to what the Cnil indicates, Cityscoot does not collect geolocation data disproportionately. Rather, we collect them for specific purposes, and only in limited cases because Cityscoot needs it to provide its service and manage its fleet of scooters,” the company replies to Tech&Co.
Among the mentioned use cases for this geolocation data, the possibility of reimbursing a customer who has been wrongly billed, but also finding stolen scooters. With Tech&Co, Cityscoot announces that it plans to “challenge this decision before the Council of State”.
Source: BFM TV
