Facebook-owner Meta and Google's YouTube now face criminal complaints in Ireland for alleged unlawful surveillance of EU citizens via tracking scripts. Privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, has challenged Meta's collection of data without explicit consent under Ireland's computer abuse law. He told The Register he's also in the process of filing a similar criminal complaint against YouTube over its use of scripts to detect ad blocking extensions in people's web browsers. Two weeks ago, Hanff filed a civil complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission against YouTube's browser interrogation system, which detects ad blocking software and refuses to play videos unless adverts are allowed or subscription money handed over. The regulators are right now waiting on a reply from Google to provide an update on the status of that claim.