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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#391

Post by [deleted] »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #225
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for a company, which is seemingly providing you a service since you visited the site, to make money off a targeted ad in exchange for free video streaming/content/entertainment. The whole thing has always seemed overblown to me. Websites make much more money off targeted ads, allowing them to do things like allow anyone to upload a video of any length and quality for free. And view other videos people u…

Give me the option to pay more if it lets me get more privacy. Otherwise I keep using fake accounts, VPN, antifingerprinting methods, ad blockers, etc.

[deleted]

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#392

Post by cavisne »

digitalengineer wrote: post #121
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.

The article has the watchdog suggesting exactly that (the specific site has 90 days to use GA in a compliant way, no direct complaint against GA), so it seems from their point of view it's legal.

The title of this post and a lot of the comments are projecting what they want GDPR to be (all non european online entities banned from doing business in the EU) vs how its being enforced.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#393

Post by sam0x17 »

tvink wrote: post #257
sam0x17 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it would create jobs too, that's a plus not a minus lol

"Creating jobs" to inefficiently solve a solved task is not a good thing, it is society burning it's tax income. It is only good to create jobs when the output of those jobs is increased value.

If there isn't anything generally available that doesn't have telemetry, then productivity software w/o telemetry isn't a solved task. If you accept LibreOffice and the like, then it's a solved task but you'll still need someone to manage it, hence job creation.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#394

Post by nathan_f77 »

I'm actually just about to get rid of Google Analytics on DocSpring.com. I set up a self-hosted instance of Plausible Analytics on Render.com yesterday. I really like it so far. I set it up on a custom subdomain so it's not blocked by any ad blockers, so it's really nice to see analytics data that's almost 100% accurate (unless visitors disable JavaScript.) Especially since DocSpring is a developer tool, so most visitors are using an ad blocker extension. Also it doesn't use any cookies, so I don't need to show a cookie banner. It really feels like a breath of fresh air.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#395

Post by marcosdumay »

googlryas wrote: post #154
marcosdumay wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian laws do not apply to Google USA.

Not generally, but they do apply to Google Italia, who would not legally be allowed to respond to requests from Google USA for European PII.

Yes, the Italian law that prohibits sending data abroad applies to Google Italia, but Google USA is submitted to the USA law, that says that the USA government can request any data from Google Italia and they are required to get it.

So the existence of Google USA makes Google Italia operation illegal.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#396

Post by nathan_f77 »

bradgessler wrote: post #381

I've slowly started ripping Google Analytics out of my Rails projects and replacing it with https://github.com/ankane/ahoy . It's so much better! I can just use SQL to see what's going in and not get overwhelmed with 100's of visualizations and complicated dashboards.

I use Ahoy too, but I don't have very good visibility into the data. I should spend more time building queries and creating charts. I should probably set up blazer as well: https://github.com/ankane/blazer It would be really nice if Ahoy came with a web UI that covered all the basics.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#397

Post by 29083011397778 »

dmix wrote: post #353
lolinder wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there is a very simple "reject" button, I click okay. Between Firefox's native protections, DNS-level blocking and uBlock, I have a lot more confidence in my own protections than I do in their honesty, and it's not worth it to me to uncheck a bunch of boxes.

Yeah clicking anything but okay or reject all (which I rarely ever come across) is usually a maze of options no one has time for except some tiny dedicated minority.

Really? I could have sworn the EU regulation requires dropping all non-essential cookies in 2 clicks or less - and that tracks with nearly every site I interact with that has a cookie banner.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#398

Post by bradgessler »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #396
bradgessler wrote: post #381

I've slowly started ripping Google Analytics out of my Rails projects and replacing it with https://github.com/ankane/ahoy . It's so much better! I can just use SQL to see what's going in and not get overwhelmed with 100's of visualizations and complicated dashboards.

I use Ahoy too, but I don't have very good visibility into the data. I should spend more time building queries and creating charts. I should probably set up blazer as well: https://github.com/ankane/blazer It would be really nice if Ahoy came with a web UI that covered all the basics.

Agreed. It would be a really great open source project to have a dashboard with all the basics in addition to standard Ahoy event captures.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#399

Post by freyr »

I’m supporting of privacy, but it’s amazing how heavy-handed European regulation can be, and how difficult it can make understanding even basic metrics about our business and how those metrics have shifted over time. I suppose their intentions are good though.
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