Annual Report 2022 out now!
In 2022, noyb continued its longstanding fight for users’ right to privacy. Although the GDPR always foresaw a strong role for non-profits in this regard, we still see a lack of enforcement by data protection authorities (DPAs). That's why our main effort in 2022 has been to push forward our nearly 800 preexisting cases, which were filed in previous years but often didn’t result in a DPA decision. This means that we have invested a lot of work in clarifying procedural issues and challenging DPAs' inaction across Europe.
While it doesn’t necessarily make for the best headlines, it is often exactly this procedural groundwork that paves the way for material decisions in our own cases, as well as for those brought by others.
The effort definitely paid off, because 2022 was the year of major decisions. In January, it kicked off with a decision on one of our data transfer complaints against the EU Parliament: the transfer of user data to the US was declared illegal. This was the first decision implementing “Schrems II”. Our winning streak continued when the Austrian DPA sided with us in our 101 model complaints: the continued use of Google Analytics was declared illegal, and other authorities such as the French and Italian data protection authorities quickly followed with similar decisions.
In addition, we also brought many new cases to court, for example in Austria, Sweden, Luxembourg and Spain. We also filed 229 new complaints with the competent authorities, for example against Google for creating spam emails in Gmail, another round of semi-automated cookie banner complaints and a complaint against giropay for collecting highly sensitive data. The year ended in much the same way as it began: with heaps of decisions in our favor. In December, the EDPB published its draft decision on our “forced consent” case against Meta from 2018, which resulted in a fine of € 390 Million against the tech giant.
None of our work would have been possible without our 5,100 supporting members, institutional members and every individual person who donates to noyb. We deeply appreciate this support, especially in these difficult economic times. Your generosity and dedication enables us to continue our work and make a meaningful impact on digital rights.
Read all about our new and ongoing projects, financials and plans for 2023 in noyb’s Annual Report 2022!
