Privacy advocacy group noyb has filed formal complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat for violating European Union data protection laws. The complaints allege the companies failed to comply with users’ access requests under Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), denying Europeans their fundamental right to understand how their personal data is used.
According to noyb, TikTok delivered incomplete and confusing data in response to a request. Meanwhile AliExpress provided a corrupted file that could only be opened once. WeChat did not respond at all. All three are accused of ignoring follow-up queries and instead sending generic privacy policies with no specific user data.
“These companies aggressively collect data but refuse to provide users with the full picture, as required by EU law,” said Kleanthi Sardeli, a data protection lawyer at noyb.
The access requests were originally submitted as part of a broader investigation into potential illegal data transfers to China. EU law prohibits data transfers to countries where privacy protections are inadequate. While other Chinese tech firms, including SHEIN and Temu, eventually cooperated, TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat remained noncompliant.
The complaints have been filed with data protection authorities in Belgium, Greece, and the Netherlands. noyb is calling for formal findings of GDPR violations, enforcement of data access rights, and administrative fines. Under GDPR, penalties can reach up to 4% of a company’s global revenue. That amount that could total €147 million for AliExpress alone.
“Just because these companies receive many requests doesn’t mean they’re allowed to violate the law,” Sardeli said.
The case marks a new escalation in European efforts to hold non-EU tech giants accountable for data privacy violations.
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