Big tech fines in 2025

The Commission found that Google abused its dominance across the advertising-technology stack by favouring its own ad exchange (AdX) in both its publisher ad server and its ad-buying tools, a conflict of interest across the chain.

The FTC settled claims that Amazon tricked consumers into enrolling in Prime through deceptive sign-up flows and made cancellation deliberately difficult, an internal process nicknamed Iliad. The settlement comprised a $1B civil penalty and $1.5B in refunds to about 35 million customers.

Texas settled claims that Google unlawfully captured biometric data such as face and voice identifiers and made misleading claims about Incognito mode and location tracking. It is one of the largest single-state privacy settlements on record.

The Irish DPC fined TikTok for unlawfully transferring EU users' data to China without ensuring equivalent protection, and for related transparency failures.

In the first Digital Markets Act fine against Apple, the Commission found that Apple prevented developers from freely informing users about, and directing them to, cheaper purchasing options outside the App Store.

The CNIL's largest cookie penalty against Google covered advertising inserted directly into Gmail inboxes without consent, alongside continued cookie-consent failures.

In one of the first Digital Markets Act fines, the Commission found that Meta's pay-or-consent model forced Facebook and Instagram users to either pay a subscription or accept full data combination for personalised ads, without a genuine less-data alternative. Meta adjusted the model after the decision.

France's competition authority found that Apple's App Tracking Transparency consent design over-burdened third-party apps while Apple's own advertising faced lighter requirements, an abuse of its dominant position.

The European Commission found three transparency breaches at X: the paid blue checkmark deceives users because anyone can buy verified status without being verified, the advertising repository is neither searchable nor complete, and researchers are blocked from the public data the DSA requires platforms to share.

Italy's competition authority found that Apple abused its dominant position in app distribution on iOS through its App Tracking Transparency policy, in force since April 2021. Because the ATT prompt does not meet EU privacy-law consent requirements on its own, third-party developers had to ask users for consent twice for the same purpose.