The private civil rights organization noyb is filing privacy complaints against TikTok, AliExpress, Shein, Temu, WeChat and Xiaomi. The ‘WeChat case’ is being investigated in the Netherlands.
According to the Austrians, these companies unauthorizedly send personal data of European citizens to servers in China.
In his statement say the action group: “EU law is clear: data transfer outside the EU is only permitted if the destination country does not undermine data protection. Since China is an authoritarian surveillance state, companies cannot realistically protect EU users’ data from access by the Chinese government.”
The privacy complaints have been filed in five EU member states. The Dutch regulator will take the WeChat case on its plate (PDF).
“It is important to find out what Chinese technology companies are doing with Europeans’ personal data. (We) have therefore submitted access requests under Article 15 GDPR to the above companies to see whether their data has been transferred to China or other countries outside the EU. Unfortunately, none of the companies have provided the legally required information on data transfer. We still know that AliExpress, Shein, TikTok and Xiaomi, according to their privacy policies, transfer data to China. Temu and WeChat report transfers to third countries. According to their corporate structures, this is most likely China.”
Source: www.emerce.nl
