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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

#151

Post by can16358p »

marian_ivanco wrote: post #18
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)

I don't want to comment on GDPR, but you must be kidding with 'can just block'. Do you expect that average joe can do that ? It like saying, we don't need police you can simply defend your self.

Everything comes at a price. I don't expect every average Joe to be tech savvy to use extensions. Though when visiting a site (an action that a personal deliberately takes) if they really care about their privacy on web, cookies, GA tracking they aren't probably average Joe and can use a blocker.

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

#152

Post by RandomLensman »

kazen44 wrote: post #127
RandomLensman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see that as a relevant distinction. Democratically elected governments can do really bad things, too, and they have a much bigger tool kit for it than corporations.

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

#153

Post by iqanq »

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…

>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.

The basis of regulations is that citizens are too stupid to consent to things even if they are fully informed. Whether that is a good or bad approach is up for debate.

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

#154

Post by Semaphor »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #118
dewey wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you can usually do a better job just by looking at server logs Yes, if you only want to count visits and don't have a problem having all bot traffic included. For everything a bit more advanced you need a proper analytics tool.

Filtering out bot traffic is easy enough with server logs. A self-hosted JavaScript analytics tool gives you more data, but Google Analytics filters out Firefox users too; contrary to ReCAPTCHA's apparent beliefs, Firefox users are mostly not bots.

> but Google Analytics filters out Firefox users too; contrary to ReCAPTCHA's apparent beliefs, Firefox users are mostly not bots.

Isn’t it the other way around? FF by default blocks GA.

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

#155

Post by pmontra »

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…

It's not only "a machine in the EU" . It's a company in the EU totally separated from the main company in the US to be out of the reach of the US government and legal system. Maybe the EU company could license software and knowledge from the US one, to keep sending a steady flow of cash there. But it's going to have its own goals and it will want to go its way soon. A hard problem IMHO.

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

#156

Post by viro »

XCSme wrote: post #119
pl0x wrote: post #98

What is the balance of privacy and analytics when even privacy friendly tools like Plausible are blocked.

I think the main thing is not to send your customers' data to third-parties without their consent. It's usually fine if you use internally analytics for the purpose of running the company, it's not fine if you send those data to other companies that use it for marketing purposes.

That's not the problem here at all tho.

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

#157

Post by calyhre »

nickjj wrote: post #120
calyhre wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using [Plausible]( https://plausible.io ) in its self-hosted version for about a month, on a 7M+ page views per month. So far so good

What type of server specs (memory, CPU, disk size, etc.) do you use to self host it? Based on an open issue[0], it's suggested to run a server with 32GB+ of memory to handle hosting Clickhouse but that would mean self hosting Plausible would end up being $160 / month on DigitalOcean which would make it 10x more expensive than hosting my custom app that I want to see analytics for. I know you can use less memory but i…

The Clickhouse instance run on a Render[0] "Standard" private service. So 1 CPU (no idea what that means), 2GB of RAM, and a 10 GB disk. So far I've been using 10% of the disk and it's not growing very much.

[0]: https://render.com

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

#158

Post by dbbk »

iqanq wrote: post #153
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…

>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. The basis of regulations is that citizens are too stupid to consent to things even if they are fully informed. Whether that is a good or bad approach is up for debate.

That's not at all the point. The issue here is data residency.

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

#159

Post by can16358p »

qiqitori wrote: post #37
AndrewDucker wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People shouldnt need to be experts in data collection or computing in order to have their data treated fairly. If Google can't protect user's tracking data (and they can't - the US law won't let them) then they shouldn't be allowed to hold it.

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.

This! GDPR is a big block towards technological improvement.

Do virtually any business that involves user registration at some point, and now you need to be sure that you're compliant with all those rules, spending limited resources on that to avoid ridiculous fines.

It benefits only the big players who has lawyers to know exactly what to do and not, and a nightmare for anyone who tries to grow a small business or have a small website.

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

#160

Post by toto444 »

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…

When I hear arguments like this I always think about what it would be if we were to replace 'user data' with 'financial data'.

"It would be so easy if companies could just pay their taxes in one country. Think of how much they could scale their finance department."

The same applies for start ups : "book keeping is such a hassle for start ups, why impose that on them? All these financial regulations are really anti business".

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