STOCKHOLM/BRUSSELS, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Austrian advocacy group Noyb filed a privacy complaint on Thursday, naming TikTok, Shein, Xiaomi, and three other Chinese companies. The complaint alleges that these firms were unlawfully transmitting European Union user data to China.
Noyb, recognized for lodging complaints against American tech giants such as Apple, Alphabet, and Meta, has triggered numerous investigations and resulted in substantial fines.
Based in Vienna, Noyb (None Of Your Business) launched its first complaint against Chinese companies.
Noyb has lodged six complaints across four European countries to halt data transfers to China and is requesting fines of up to 4% of a company's global revenue.
According to Noyb, Alibaba's e-commerce platform AliExpress, Shein, TikTok, and Xiaomi have acknowledged sending personal data of Europeans to China. Meanwhile, Temu and Tencent's messaging app WeChat are reportedly transferring data to undisclosed "third countries," likely China.
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates that data transfers outside the EU are permissible only if the destination country upholds data protection standards.
Kleanthi Sardeli, a data protection lawyer at Noyb, emphasized, "Given that China is an authoritarian surveillance state, it is evident that China's data protection standards are not equivalent to the EU's. The transfer of Europeans' personal data is unequivocally unlawful and should cease immediately."
Chinese companies, notably TikTok, owned by ByteDance, have encountered regulatory challenges in various jurisdictions. TikTok is set to suspend its U.S. app on Sunday in compliance with a federal ban on the social media platform.
Moreover, the European Commission is investigating TikTok regarding suspected shortcomings in curbing election interference, particularly during the Romanian presidential elections in November.