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Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

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Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#31

It's time for EU services to shine.

Based on the results of GDPR, it'll probably just result in more annoying sites that users will avoid due to all of the pop up banners. Hopefully I'm wrong, I wish there was strong competition from Europe

Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#34
post #2

The article seems to suggest that it's declared illegal in Austria. Does this somehow apply to the whole EU then?

The ruling which led to this conclusion was made back in July 2020.

From the article:

> This is a very detailed and sound decision. The bottom line is: Companies can't use US cloud services in Europe anymore. It has now been 1.5 years since the Court of Justice confirmed this a second time, so it is more than time that the law is also enforced.

This article is addressing a specific case which follows from a previous judgement (known as Schrems II) which determined that Facebook could not transfer data from Ireland to the US under the US 'Privacy Shield' framework, as it no longer meets the GDPR's adequacy requirement due to CLOUD Act.

This finding by the Austrian court just reaffirms that the Schrems judgement also applies to Google Analytics.

As the article mentions, this is the first of 101 cases ongoing brought by Schrems, and I expect them all to end in more or less the same outcome.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2020/6520...

Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#35
post #16

Thank you Max Schrems for everything you do to preserve EU citizens' privacy and compliance of companies to European law!

Quoted post unavailable.

This is not about downloading content, it's about uploading content.

Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#36
post #10

I really hope this will have consequences that shake up ad tech, but the cynic in me says: They're just going to add another disclaimer in their cookie banner and exactly nothing will happen.

That's what is great about the GDPR. Just adding another disclaimer in a cookie banner absolves them of nothing.

In fact, this whole case is exactly about that. Some Austrian website tried to use Google Analytics and just added another disclaimer in their cookie banner. Now they are facing the consequences.

Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Austrian Data Protection Authority strikes the same chord as the European court when declaring Privacy Shield as invalid: It has decided that the use of Google Analytics violates the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It seems Google was sued in Austria and they have found it to violate the GDPR so yes, it applies to the whole EU.

Not Google, a company. Because not GA on it's self is illegal. The use of GA is illegal.

Now I'm wondering how many EU government sites are currently using GA.

Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#38
post #22

The CLOUD Act itself is the issue. Don't use MS Office 365 or any other US based service even if their servers are in Europe as they can not guarantee that your data is not accessible by the US. Amazon and Cloudflare are all great service but your data is under US jurisdiction.

You can control locality for some parts of Cloudflare's offering [1], so I guess if you want to comply with the privacy shield stuff, you would have to ensure that the data is stored on a server within a EU country. [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-the-cloudflare-data-...

Doesn’t work that way. This issue is that CloudFlare is a US company and can be compelled to disclose information to US Govt regardless of where they hold the data.

Re: Austria's data protection authority has found that Google Analytics is illegal

#39
post #15
post #7

To be clear, the transfer of EU citizen's data to the US was deemed against the GDPR. This decision does not mean that Google Analytics itself is illegal.

But, due to American intelligence agencies explicit access to overseas data (Schrems II), any such service by an American company can't meet the requirements set forth by the EU, and thus can be considered illegal for any practical purpose.

As I understand the ruling though this pertains to the fact that data is transferred to the U.S, it may be that if they changed to just using servers in the EU it would still be declared illegal but a new case would have to go through to make this declaration?
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