Max Schrems

If you’re a big tech company in Europe, chances are you don’t want to hear from Max Schrems. The lawyer and founder of NOYB (None of Your Business)—a Vienna-based privacy-rights nonprofit—has made it his life’s mission to ensure that companies like Google and Facebook don’t exploit user data, often by filing complaints with European regulators. In 2015, he famously helped to overturn Safe Harbor, a major trade agreement that permitted companies like Facebook to transfer Europeans’ personal data to the U.S. NOYB has since filed complaints against companies from Apple to Amazon. In January, a French data-protection regulator fined Google €50 million (or about $57 million) for a breach of a European Union data-privacy law—thanks in part to complaints submitted by NOYB and the advocacy group La Quadrature du Net. —Tara Law