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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#481

Post by cgjohn »

y42 wrote: post #429
m3adow wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you still have to provide a cookie banner as soon as your analytics are storing cookies, even if it's your own?

> Don't you still have to provide a cookie banner as soon as your analytics are storing cookies, even if it's your own? You need consent for every kind of storage usage on client side if you create profiles to analyze the them for marketing goals. If not, and no PII is being processed, no consent is required. Eg you could easily aggregate your server logs without a consent.

Just to be clear: PII is not the same as personal data as defined by the GDPR. The latter is generally much stricter as it also includes indirect data. Data which would be anonymous by itself but in a collection uniquely links to a single person would still be considered personal data under the GDPR.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#482

Post by ricardobayes »

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.

Forget anonimized GA, I wonder what regulators would say to the likes of Hotjar which even records your screen and can be played back.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#483

Post by suction »

alexklarjr wrote: post #480
kcartlidge wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since when EU became politically stable? Last time i checked you were at war with Russia. Russia's attack on Ukraine has no relevance at all to whether the EU is or isn't politically stable. There may be other reasons you can cite, in which case fair enough, but that example is a non-EU third party attacking a non-EU third party. And the EU is not at war with Russia.

EU did everything to start it, established economic blockade of Russia and sending weapons to Ukraine. At this point it is a war between Russia and EU in Ukraine.

Putin's disinformation really worked wonders on you.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#484

Post by autoexec »

closewith wrote: post #478
autoexec wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google announced earlier this year that Google Analytics 4, its successor, does not log or store IP address at all. So if I go to a website and it has me load code from Google's servers it's still got to send my IP address to them. I'm not sure why we'd take them at their word that they won't keep that data around (I'd like to see that independently verified). but it'll be sent to the server logs if nothing else. W…

In a privacy-conscious implementation of GTM/GA, those scripts can be loaded from a first-party server controlled by the company, and Google will never see the user's IP address. There is no real alternative to Google Analytics for most companies because of the Google Ads integration. If you advertise with Google, you need to send them conversion data, which means the GCLID. Without Google Ads, switching would be sim…

> In a privacy-conscious implementation of GTM/GA, those scripts can be loaded from a first-party server controlled by the company,

Thanks! I didn't know that was an option. I haven't noticed sites doing it yet at least, but I hope it catches on even for sites targeting US visitors! It'd be especially nice for government websites using GA.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#485

Post by aembleton »

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.

> how about a badge for links indicating whether it uses ga?

Sounds like a browser plugin would be best for this, then all links across the web could show it. Or you could just block it in uBO and not think about it again.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#486

Post by solar-ice »

ronsor wrote: post #129
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.

My impression is the lawmakers assumed that companies would do what they go on about in their blogs and marketing material all the time - ensure the best user experience for their customers, which they could do by properly complying with the GDPR.

Instead, the companies took their masks off and decided to beat us over the head with illegal consent popups to trick us into believing that a damaged user experience is the only possible outcome of the GDPR.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#487

Post by einpoklum »

TurningCanadian wrote: post #308
einpoklum wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are so tightly coupled with packages like office 365 Are they though? Do you know this for a fact? I mean, sure, MS Office is very popular in government settings, but does this really go beyond the possibility of just replacing it with LibreOffice if they so decided?

Sharing a link to a document that others can edit in the cloud is much more convenient than emailing around a _final_v3(2).docx document.

Well... there's Collabora online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQFTkFaYlo

or Box/DropBox/other cloud storage services, which is less convenient than proper collaborative in-pace editing, but you can still get the file at the link, edit it and upload it.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#488

Post by concordDance »

kixiQu wrote: post #143
digitalengineer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if anyone is curious about why that gives the govt. access: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act (God willing they repeal it, even if only for the international commerce implications...)

> (God willing they repeal it, even if only for the international commerce implications...)

It's hard to express how impossible this is. It is very very strongly in the state's interest to keep powers like this. We're more likely to get communism...

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#489

Post by aembleton »

djbebs wrote: post #256
UncleEntity wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you tried to go to rt.com hany time recently?

Still works for me from the UK

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#490

Post by concordDance »

suction wrote: post #432
cm2012 wrote: post #91

Another decision in a long stream that will make it much harder for EU start-ups companies to catch up to American ones. With absolutely no improvements to actual EU citizen well being.

As an EU citizen, I find it to be a huge improvement to detangle my data from US-American entities. Especially with the election of Trump and January 6th. Maybe Americans haven't fully realized what that meant for US-EU relations for the next hundreds of years. The US is just not a politically stable country until further notice.

Eh? Jan 6 wasn't very noteable (a bunch of disorganized protestors are let into congress, but the state was not meaningfully threatened), the US has long had political instabilities, the business plot was way worse, but who has heard of it now...
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