Max Schrems' non-profit Noyb files a complaint with the French privacy watchdog, claims Google's Android Advertising Identifier violates EU's ePrivacy Directive
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Context & Ripple Effects
Noyb had already challenged Google’s Android Ad ID under GDPR in a 2020 Austrian complaint, and later targeted Apple’s IDFA with complaints to German and Spanish regulators. The French filing extends that identifier-focused campaign to the ePrivacy Directive and another national watchdog.
The sequence puts Google and Apple’s advertising identifiers under related but distinct legal theories, shifting Noyb’s challenge from a single company complaint toward a broader test of mobile tracking consent.
First-order effects
- Google’s Android Advertising Identifier is now subject to a French privacy-watchdog complaint alleging a breach of the EU ePrivacy Directive.
- Noyb adds a French enforcement route to its earlier Android Ad ID GDPR challenge, increasing the regulatory burden around Google’s mobile advertising identifier.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers and app-based ad-tech firms that rely on Android identifiers face greater uncertainty over whether the identifier can be used without the consent standard Noyb is seeking to enforce.
- Apple’s IDFA becomes a closer comparator after Noyb’s German and Spanish complaints over advertiser tracking, making platform-specific identifier policies a shared regulatory issue.
Third-order effects
- If national watchdogs accept Noyb’s theory, mobile advertising identifiers may increasingly be governed as consent-sensitive tracking tools rather than routine device settings, constraining platform control over ad measurement.
- The pattern favors privacy enforcement that tests the same tracking practice across several regulators and legal regimes, rather than resolving it through a single complaint.
The trend: European privacy advocacy is broadening from challenges to individual platforms into coordinated scrutiny of the mobile identifiers that underpin ad tracking.