The Board of Protection of Personal Data Has Published New Decisions 09 October 2019

We hereby present the summary of these decisions by the Board.

The decision No. 2019/269 on Facebook published on 18.09.2019 by the Board

Although it is stated that the notice will be submitted to the Board in writing within the week following the e-mail giving information about data breach related to ‘’View as Someone Else’’ sent by the Facebook representative, dated 14.10.2018, Facebook has not made any notice to the Board. As a result of this failure of notice, the Board has decided to examine ex officio.

As a result of the review of the Board, it is determined that the data breach is a result of an error caused by the 3 different interaction of Facebook system which are ‘’View as Someone Else’’, ‘’Birthday Celebration’’ and ‘’Video Uploader’’. The Board, ascertained that the personal data such as name, gender, birthday, relationship status, educational background, religious information, country, location, recent searches on Facebook, up to 500 major accounts followed by the user were affected by the breach. The Board also stated that 280,959 users using Facebook in Turkey were affected by the data breach.

For this reason, the Board, pursuant to Article 12 of the Law, decided to impose 1.150.000 TL due to lack of administrative and technical measures to ensure the protection of personal data within the scope of Article 18 of the Law No. 6698 and also decided to impose 450.000 TL due to application which violates the obligation to notify as soon as possible. Thus, the Board of Protection of Personal Data decided to impose an administrative fine of 1 million 600 thousand TL in total, on Facebook. The Board had previously given an administrative fine of 1 million 650 thousand TL to Facebook due to data breach.                                  

The decision No. 2019/254 on S Şans Oyunları A.Ş published on 27.08.2019 by the Board

The Board has been informed of the data breach in line with the S Şans Oyunları A.Ş.’s notification that they were operating as a virtual bookmaker on the website www.tuttur.com and that they were informed of the data breach by one of the members of the Company sharing the data leakage information and as a result, the Board has initiated an investigation to examine the claims.

As a result of the review of the Board of Protection of Personal Data, it is stated that the failure to determine the date of occurrence of the breach is an indication of failure of the data supervisor to carry out the necessary supervision, the failure to determine when the data in the Excel list was withdrawn from the system and when it was transferred to the data processor is an technical and administrative defect. And also, the fact that the number of person affected by data breach cannot be determined although 90% of the members in the list have been declared by the Company that they have never entered the system is an indication that the technical and administrative measures have not been fully implemented or applied, that the Company has not been able to take action to notify the people concerned in connection with the data breach.

For this reason, the Board, pursuant to Article 12 of the Law, decided to impose 150.000 TL due to lack of administrative and technical measures to ensure the protection of personal data within the scope of Article 18 of the Law No. 6698 and also decided to impose 30.000 TL due to application which violates the obligation to notify as soon as possible.

The decision No. 2019/255 on a Tourism Company published on 27.08.2019 by the Board

As a result of the notification by Company to the Board that the cyber-attack is realized because of the entrance of the unauthorized passwords through the Local Area Network (LAN) and that this situation was occurred through a leakage from the computer of an employee located in the general areas of Company, the Board has decided to examine ex officio.

As a result of this review, the Board determined that there is not any special personal data among the affected personal data, that the access by unauthorized third parties who are not employees of the Company is an administrative imprudence, that the fact that the employees have not received pre-infringement security training is an administrative deficiency in terms of providing personal data security and awareness, that the failure of taking notice whether the leakage in computer network existed is an technical deficiency and the notification of the incident from employees in the other departments to the IT Department is an indication that the Company’s IT Department and Information Systems are not functioning properly.

For this reason, the Board, pursuant to Article 12 of the Law, decided to impose 400.000 TL due to lack of administrative and technical measures to ensure the protection of personal data within the scope of Article 18 of the Law No. 6698 and also decided to impose 100.000 TL due to application which violates the obligation to notify as soon as possible.

The decision No. 2019/225 about Obligations of the branches in Turkey of legal entities resident abroad and the Liaison Office published on 23.07.2019 by the Board

The Board, after the assessment, decided that;

• Data supervisor resident abroad which process personal data activities directly or through branches in Turkey must be registered.
• In the case of the branches, of legal entities resident abroad, located in Turkey, by definition, are responsible for determining the personal data aims and the means and for managing of the establishment of the data recording system, they will be considered as a data supervisor in Turkey as distinct from legal entity resident abroad, also, in this case, as a result of the evaluation to be made in terms of ‘’annual number of employees’’ and ‘’ annual financial statement’’, it will be decided for the branches, of the legal entity resident abroad, located in Turkey, whether there is an obligation to register to the Registry or not. The branches in this case does not have any obligation to register.

In order to open a Liaison Office in Turkey, incorporation of a company must be executed according to the foreign law and the established Liaison Office is not be able to do commercial activities. And also, considering the fact that the Liaison Offices are not like branches and that are established for communication, feasibility research, conducting some projects in social and cultural areas, making preparations for the mergers and acquisitions between companies, promotions and advertising, closely monitoring the job opportunities in the country and informing the central company about these issues, these liaison offices are not obliged to register to Registry.