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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#121

Post by digitalengineer »

corywatilo wrote: post #18

Italy is the 4th in a string of recent decisions across the EU. (We're tracking these cases on isgoogleanalyticsillegal.com along with details for each.) Note that it's not illegal to use GA entirely, just illegal to use in its default state which transmits PII to the US.

Some time ago Google gave EU admins the option to select a local regional (EU) server. This means the data is not send to the US. But! It’s still nog fully legal as the Google HQ (and thus the US government( can still access all the data.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#122

Post by Nextgrid »

closewith wrote: post #61
lmkg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just illegal to use in its default state which transmits PII to the US As I mentioned in a sibling comment, this is technically true but complying with GDPR takes more than unchecking a few boxes. I've never seen any GA set-up that would remotely approach compliance. At minimum, you need to mask IP's before they reach Google, which means standing up a non-Google server to proxy all the hits. That is more complexity…

That’s a very common implementation of serverside GTM/GA in the EU. If you advertise, you’ll still be sending GCLIDs, though.

If only ad clicks send back tracking parameters (and nothing else) it might actually fall into legitimate interest.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#123

Post by abarwick »

clairity wrote: post #117

i’d support any legislation that booted google, fb, ms, adobe, salesforce, and a whole host of other surveillance tech companies from any and all levels of government. it’s literally as important as the separation of church and state. in fact, i’d love to see a constitutional amendment explicitly separating corporate interests from governmental ones, in all facets of civic life (e.g., campaign finance).

This is just naive. Government offices/agencies are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 that forcefully separating them would require home built solutions which would always be terrible, less secure, and more expensive to the tax payer. There’s a lot of good these products can provide, granted they are properly audited and have high security requirements.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#124

Post by tannhaeuser »

Well HN, how about a badge for links indicating whether it uses ga? We have to start somewhere don't we? Or we'll continue to see the web decline. Actually, from my PoV, it might be too late already. Maybe it's just me or people in EU being harassed with banner popups, but I hardly go to any link anymore, and so do many other people I know. It's just not worth it.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#126

Post by giobox »

Rygian wrote: post #67
tin7in wrote: post #12

We are based in Europe and self-host our analytics exactly for this reason. I feel this is just the beginning.

Self-hosting does not automatically make your analytics legal, on the other hand. Processing of your users' personal data is legal only in the few exceptional scenarios outlined in Article 6. https://gdprinfo.eu/en-article-6

Our definition of "exceptional scenarios" is clearly not the same... The list of scenarios in article 6 are common business operations covering a huge range of legitimate activities where processing might need to occur; there is little exceptional about them.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#127

Post by solar-ice »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #40
ryanmcbride wrote: post #26

I've been using clicky on a few of my sites and even though they _assure_ me that it's totally compliant with gdpr I don't really believe them, does anyone have a decent alternative for analytics that respects people's privacy? I just want to see when I get new vs returning visitors on a page. Cloudflare's analytics are okay but I like how granular clicky can get, but if there's no good way to do that I think I'm jus…

matomo is something you can self host

There's several self-hosted solutions, as well as several GDPR-compliant SaaS solutions. They generally work pretty well; I've seen people set up, for example, Plausible, in a couple of hours on a cheap VPS.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#128

Post by adfm »

la64710 wrote: post #93

This kind of ridiculous laws do not understand the boundless nature of internet. If you want to protect privacy of netizens simply make a universal law instead of having different laws in different countries.

Since the Internet is not a fiefdom, universal law is moot. Nation states will draft tracking laws that are only only enforceable through tracking in an attempt to gain their slice of authoritarian pie. Pointing to the Google or US is typical strawman BS and gives people a false sense of security because they should assume everyone, not just the Google, is tracking them. Getting people to own their data is an uphill climb, but is ultimately what will curb the negative behavior we're witnessing.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#129

Post by ronsor »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #124

Well HN, how about a badge for links indicating whether it uses ga? We have to start somewhere don't we? Or we'll continue to see the web decline. Actually, from my PoV, it might be too late already. Maybe it's just me or people in EU being harassed with banner popups, but I hardly go to any link anymore, and so do many other people I know. It's just not worth it.

I'm an American, but I occasionally use an EU VPN. I don't understand how EU residents can tolerate the number of cookie/privacy/GDPR/whatever popups every site has, even on the sites of EU companies.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#130

Post by UncleEntity »

naet wrote: post #105

As more and more country specific legal regulations are raised, I wonder who will be the ultimate gatekeepers of the general internet when certain actors behave against the "rules". The current landscape is a complex system of seeming contradictions straddling different levels of public and private, centralized and decentralized, anarchical and moderated, etc. Will ISPs be forced to cut off traffic from certain areas…

Nah, they’ll just slap them with a fine now again as a substitute for direct taxation and let them do what they do basically unchanged.

Once the Europeans have to use a foreign proxy to see the regular internet, like the Chinese, then we will have a real discussion on online privacy.

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