Turkey fines Twitch over data breach that revealed top streamer income

Turkey’s Personal Data Protection Board has fined Twitch 2 million lira over a data breach that happened three years ago.

Back in 2021, Twitch suffered a massive data leak that affected thousands of streamers and revealed the income of the Amazon-owned platform’s top streamers. It also revealed an alleged ‘do not ban’ list that included the likes of Tyler1 and Ricegum.

The leaked data was quickly shared across the depths of the internet, prompting Twitch to acknowledge the incident.

“We have learned that some data was exposed to the internet due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party,” they said. “Our teams are working with urgency to investigate the incident.”

Eventually, talk about the breach subsided, but on Saturday, November 16, Reuters reported that Twitch officially received a fine over the incident.

Twitch

Turkey’s Personal Data Protection Board fined Twitch 2 million Turkish Lira, which converts to roughly $58,000 USD. The breach reportedly affected 35,274 individuals in Turkey.

The investigation reportedly found that Twitch failed to put proper security measures in place beforehand, and only addressed the issue after the breach took place.

This isn’t the first incident between Twitch and Turkey over the years, either. Around the same time of the data breach, the Amazon-owned streaming platform took action against 150 streamers for alleged money laundering through fraudulent credit card transactions primarily made in Turkey.

In February 2024, Turkey’s National Lottery Association banned access to both Twitch and Kick over its gambling content. According to a Turkish journalist, officials “stated that Kick’s entry into Turkey was to attract Turkish youth to Roulette.”

When they finished the investigation into Kick, officials allegedly learned of similar streams on Twitch – and promptly took action against the Amazon-owned platform.