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Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

cnil.fr

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

#131

Post by mixedbit »

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'm not sure such split would require sub-companies to be public, they could likely be private, owned by a single publicly traded US company. Tech companies already have many subsidiaries in countries that they have offices in, for example employees in European countries are not employed by a US company, but a subsidiary which is not publicly traded.

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

#132

Post by zoobab »

Fiahil wrote: post #107
southerntofu wrote: post #86

Is the CNIL actually starting to do its job? Since the early 2000's they were doing literally nothing against the many crimes against users committed by big tech. In the past few years though they started to distribute fines when the law was obviously and willingly broken (eg. Google)... did they suddenly start to care for users? or do they care that they can fill the pockets of the government (who doesn't dare to ta…

> Is the CNIL actually starting to do its job? IIRC, They got massive funding with GDPR

GDPR enforcement is big business for the government, but no money goes to the poor associations, like LQDN or NYOB.

Quite the contrary, those associations have to survive on 'donations', and probably not very high salaries for their staff.

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

#133

Post by Dave3of5 »

Don't quite understand this at all.

Can we cut through the clickbait and see what's wrong here. If my website askes users for their permission to use GA and they click yes then is that still illegal here? I see this as yes it's still illegal.

Also is it illegal because there is an anonymised id number created when you send data. If that's the case then it's not just GA that's a problem but any tracking system i.e. Plausable.

Furthermore given that a randomised unique id is personal data then there would appear no way to use any websites analytics on any website as you have to store this in a DB which will require a unique id per row by design.

What about other data for example a webserver log will contain similar data is that not allowed? If it's not allowed how can I ensure my site is protected as I need those logs to identify and ban hackers.

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

#134

Post by postalrat »

paulcole wrote: post #35
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?

Nobody is going to get in “legal hot water” on account of Google Fonts or Google Analytics unless they’re Google themselves or a top 10 ecommerce company some politician wants to make an example of. There’s millions of sites relying on those things. Is the EU going to drag them all into court? This is like saying you never jay walk because you want to avoid the legal hot water. The water isn’t even lukewarm!

Show me a single site that relies on google analytics.

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

#135

Post by KingOfCoders »

londons_explore wrote: post #121
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…

"I think a lot of the big tech companies are very reluctant to split their operations"

Yes but they are even more reluctant to lose all EU revenue.

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

#136

Post by can16358p »

Bayart wrote: post #74
can16358p wrote: post #8

I don't like Google but seriously this whole GDPR thing is getting out of hand. Anyone who's concerned about their data being collected can just block Google-or-like-related domains. Rest is just making life of web developers/admins/tech company owners harder. 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)

> Rest is just making life of web developers/admins/tech company owners harder. So what ? The right to privacy is more important than a select few having an easier time doing business, end of story.

Well no one puts a gun on your head and forces you to visit a website. Anyone who cares can always block GA with extensions either. If you are entering my site, hosted by me, owned under my domain, I can put whatever tracking script I want, controlled and used by any company and no one should have a right to control it.

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

#137

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

acnops wrote: post #129

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.

It doesn't really matter micro targeting is not effective.

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

#138

Post by true_religion »

MereInterest wrote: post #59
qiqitori wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shouldn't have to be experts in this stuff either just to put up a website somewhere, or worse keep up with every new ruling.

If you want to toss some static HTML into a host, go for it. If you want to record statistics on how many page hits you had, go for it. If you want to add JavaScript for interactions and making it look prettier, go for it. But if you want to contribute to a privacy-violating network that tracks individual users, then that goes far beyond wanting "just to put up a website somewhere".

Well, you can totally contribute to a privacy violating network … so long as the data is located and processed in France.

They are only tryin to keep their monopoly on government oversight which is reasonable for a governing body (our citizens = our control).

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

#139

Post by YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo »

piva00 wrote: post #97
pSYoniK wrote: post #49

There are plenty of privacy respecting analytics out there - Plausible, Matomo or Simple Analytics. Depending on what your actual needs are, you can also just use something like GoAccess, logwatch, Splunk or multitail to check your logs and use those for analytics information. In one of my previous jobs the marketing department complained about Google Analytics not working on one of our pages. GA hadn't been working…

> While I get that someone people are slightly foaming at the mouth because of GDPR (and this starts an entire debate about an aging political population that doesn't understand technology AT ALL) going overboard, my question is - do we actually use all the analytics that are provided by GA? Who are these people foaming about GDPR?

Adtech

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

#140

Post by iamacyborg »

Dave3of5 wrote: post #133

Don't quite understand this at all. Can we cut through the clickbait and see what's wrong here. If my website askes users for their permission to use GA and they click yes then is that still illegal here? I see this as yes it's still illegal. Also is it illegal because there is an anonymised id number created when you send data. If that's the case then it's not just GA that's a problem but any tracking system i.e. Pl…

> Can we cut through the clickbait and see what's wrong here. If my website askes users for their permission to use GA and they click yes then is that still illegal here? I see this as yes it's still illegal.

Yes, because you're still passing personal data to the USA, which means US intelligence services can access it.

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