Noyb aims at TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat in latest privacy complaint
On Thursday, the Austrian privacy organization Noyb officially filed complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat for allegedly infringing Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Chinese tech companies are known for collecting copious amounts of personal data from their users. Sharing what information they collected and processed isn’t something they’re fond of.
On the other hand, Article 15 of the GDPR states that data subjects have the right to know what personal data a company has accumulated.
To comply with this obligation, most organizations have implemented some sort of automation tool that allows them to submit a data access request, for example, a ‘download your information’ button.
However, both TikTok and AliExpress refuse to give customers access to all of their data, as is legally required. According to Noyb, TikTok only provides part of a user’s data in an unstructured form that is impossible to understand. AliExpress hands out a broken file that could be opened only once, while WeChat completely ignores data requests.
Even when the companies were approached for a second time, they still refused to hand over all the details. Instead, they provided the same content of their privacy policy without any individual information.
“The GDPR makes it clear that companies must give their users specific information about the data they are processing about them. Just because they receive a lot of requests doesn’t mean they can withhold information,” Kleanthi Sardeli, data protection lawyer at Noyb, says in a public statement.
Therefore, Noyb has filed formal complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat with the data protection authorities (DPAs) in Belgium, Greece, and the Netherlands. The privacy advocacy group has requested that they be coerced to comply with Europe’s GDPR obligation to provide data access requests.
Lastly, Noyb has asked the DPAs to impose a fine to prevent recurrence in the future. Such a fine can reach up to 4 percent of the company’s global annual revenue, which would be around €147 million for AliExpress.
Back in January 2025, Noyb lodged complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, SHEIN, Temu, WeChat, and Xiaomi for unlawful data transfers to China.