“It’s a bit frightening because all your data is shared by a huge ecosystem and you don’t know,” Falque-Pierrotin said. “I think people are more and more conscious of that. So they rely on the regulator to unveil the black box.”

She called the approach not so much of a “French sensibility” as a “consumer sensibility.”

‘Judge, jury, executioner’

Some here worry that European regulators have become too powerful. The same officials investigate, engage in negotiations with companies, make rulings and levy fines — a process with far fewer checks than in the United States. Courts can overrule European regulators but rarely do.

Attorneys representing companies complain that a single bureaucracy can be “judge, jury and executioner” in cases. They also express concern that companies complain to regulators about rivals mainly to drain them of resources.

“The threshold to be taken seriously and generate a lot of aggravation is very low,” said Brussels-based lawyer Miguel Rato, who has often represented technology companies. “One thing the commission doesn’t do nearly well enough is deal swiftly with complaints that have no merit.”

The high-tech regulatory fights in Europe are unlikely to quiet soon. French regulators are investigating Google’s recent move to track signed-in users across its dozens of individual products. Irish regulators are reviewing Facebook’s compliance with a detailed audit of how the company handles personal data. The European Commission is probing Apple’s agreement with publishers over e-books, though a deal on that may be near as well. The U.S. Justice Department also is pursuing the e-books case, but a resolution may be more than a year away.