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Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

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Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#121

Post by londons_explore »

sfifs wrote: post #83

A lot of this seems to be coming due to US regulations that compel US registered companies to hand over data from subsidiaries in Europe markets if asked by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies. With these various data locality regulations, i wonder if a standard operating approach could be to split tech companies into 3 legal entities, a technology licensing company, a US registered operations company and a…

I think a lot of the big tech companies are very reluctant to split their operations inside/outside europe.

They gain big benefits by having a single pool of datacenters able to serve users from anywhere in the world. If they needed to guarantee that an EU user would always be served with a machine in the EU, I can imagine it would add at least 20% to their operating costs.

They'd need more equipment both inside and outside the EU to handle failover, maintanance, etc. They'd also have more complexity slowing development down (they can no longer have small services 'mastered' in just one region). And there is substantial extra complexity in application design (what when a tweet from an EU user is retweeted by a US user, but then replied to by an EU user. Where will the text of the tweet be stored? How will deletion be handled?).

For example, will HN have to have seperate databases for "comments by EU users" and "comments by US users"? And will they need a process to migrate your account from one to the other?

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#122

Post by Pooge »

I contacted them approximately 4 years ago to denounce the developers of TrackMania that don't hash passwords [1]. I have not received an answer since, and I bet they do not even care. I'm sure they are a bunch of hypocrites and now that they've realized they can make a lot of money randomly fining Big Tech, this is just what they're going to do.

[1]: If you clicked on "Password forgotten" on the log in page, they'd just send you your password unencrypted by email.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#124

Post by Vespasian »

rightbyte wrote: post #75
dumbfounder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google doesn't offer the ability then it is up to the customer to not use GA until Google complies. I hate this ruling, but implying it's just Google's job to do this and everyone else should just do nothing is crazy.

Surely Google has presense in France? Why not go after Google directly. It is way easier than processing 1000s of siteowners. Google are the ones spying. The aggregate put on GA dashboard are a minute of the personal info they collect.

Reasons:

1. Legal: It's the site owners integrating GA and therefore taking on the liabilities just like they do with every other supplier. When a part in your car fails immediately after you bought it, it's the manufacturers job to fix it even if they acquired the parts from a third party (e.g. Bosch).

2. Practical: A website 100% located in France and catering to 100% french customers is much more likely to fix the problem than the international anonymous machine that is Google.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#126

Post by Semaphor »

XCSme wrote: post #108

Shameless plug: I have been building a self-hosted-only analytics platform for a long time: https://www.uxwizz.com . It looks like a good time to switch to self-hosted analytics.

Is it really such a rare occurrence for people to want to see statistics for a specific page or compare pages/articles? Because almost all new-wave analytics tools either do not support it, or it’s hidden and not easily discoverable.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#127

Post by kazen44 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #38
heurisko wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially with these European intentions I frankly believe this is more of a political war against US and US-based companies. (No, I'm not from US as well) No, Germany is a big leader in the EU. They are very sensitive to issues around privacy, from the DDR era. They don't want private corporations having DDR-like folders of information on citizens.

But successive German governments really like the state to collect all communications data - so the sensitivity is very one-sided.

the major other difference being that I can democratically elect who is part of my government. I cannot do this in a US owned corporation.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#128

Post by yreg »

aftergibson wrote: post #11

Is anyone using an alternative that provides some basic analytics and isn't likely to get me in legal hot water in the future? I've already offloaded Google Fonts due to the German ruling. I'm happy to self-host piwik if needed, but could that fall foul of regulators?

We decided to go for (selfhosted) Umami[0] but don't have it in production yet.

It is not really a replacement for GA though, it collects much less data. We've decided it is enough for us.

[0] - https://umami.is/

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#129

Post by acnops »

AFAIK, this could be pretty disastrous for French businesses that funnel conversion data to Google Analytics, which is then used to optimize their Google Search ads.

Switching to another solution for analytics might be ok, but losing the ability to automatically optimize ads based on conversion data is a big pain.

Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

#130

Post by KingOfCoders »

sfifs wrote: post #83

A lot of this seems to be coming due to US regulations that compel US registered companies to hand over data from subsidiaries in Europe markets if asked by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies. With these various data locality regulations, i wonder if a standard operating approach could be to split tech companies into 3 legal entities, a technology licensing company, a US registered operations company and a…

The point is more nuanced: The problem is not the handing over (happens here too), but the fact EU citizens do not get informed this has happend and have no legal way to challenge this (especially concerning FISA/FISC). They have the opportunity to do so in the EU.

Yes, this is what will happen with a setup of 3 entities, b/c FANG will not want to miss EU revenue.

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