TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat violate EU privacy laws, data protection group claims

The Austrian digital rights and data protection advocate has filed complaints against popular Chinese companies over a lack of data transparency.

Chinese apps like TikTok are notorious for collecting large amounts of user data and not sharing how that data is being used.

That’s what the Austrian data protection group, noyb, said after they filed complaints against Chinese companies TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat for failing to comply with EU data regulations.

Noyb said that most major tech companies have implemented tools that automatically allow users to access their information and comply with GDPR.

“However, both TikTok and AliExpress haven’t bothered to give the data subjects access to all of their data as required under Article 15 GDPR,” noyb said.

All companies failed to provide the complainants with a comprehensive and understandable copy of their data.

“TikTok only provided part of the complainant’s data in an unstructured form that was impossible to understand. AliExpress provided a broken file that could be opened only once. WeChat, on the other hand, just completely ignored the complainant’s request,” noyb said.

Complainants sent follow-up requests to the companies asking for more information on their data. But instead of addressing the issue, the Chinese apps sent a copy of their privacy policies.

These complaints were filed in a series that targeted major Chinese companies like Shein, Temu, and Xiaomi.

“Shein, Temu, and Xiaomi provided the complainants with additional information. Meanwhile, TikTok, AliExpress, and WeChat continued to violate the GDPR,” noyb said.

The data protection group has filed complaints and asks the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) to impose fines as much as 4% of each company's annual revenue.

If fined, companies such as AliExpress could be fined upwards of €147 million ($170 million) for GDPR violations.