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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

#181

Post by abelaer »

tsm wrote: post #28
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?

I just started using Goatcounter for a noncommercial site (music history research blog) and I'm happy with it. All I wanted was a glorified hit counter. It doesn't have the goal conversion metrics and other advanced features of GA, so obviously not a drop-in replacement for all use cases. https://www.goatcounter.com/

Another very happy user here. Was super easy to add to my Jekyll site hosted on GH pages. I believe the creator is active here as well btw.

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

#183

Post by heurisko »

nickpp wrote: post #146
kazen44 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Government surveillance on citizens has a long history of horrifying consequences, especially in Germany. What is the worst corporations are doing with our data? Better ads?!

> What is the worst corporations are doing with our data? Better ads?!

There is often no clear dividing line between government and corporations. You give one freedom to abuse privacy and it will be used by the other.

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

#184

Post by nickpp »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #87
scotty79 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young adult, when visitor counter on a website was en vogue, I was building a system that would take note of where user came from, which pages they visited how long have stayed there, which page they exited through. What paths they took through a site. It didn't go that far. But when I saw people plastering Facebook like button everywhere I knew exactly what that meant. That one random corp now can know ev…

The industry standard is to show utter contempt for the user. It's expected that every site will show you tacky and distracting ads and will dump 90 third party cookies on you. It's beyond belief. Imagine going into a travel agent to inquire about a flight. The moment you step through the door 50 people attach themselves to you. Some start recording your every action in a notebook, others flash torches in your eyes,…

Imagine there is another travel agent not doing all that, but it costs money while the first is free. Wouldn’t you like to have the right to choose which one to visit, or do you prefer that choice to me made for you by politicians instead?

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

#185

Post by mschuster91 »

tyfon wrote: post #164
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…

The EU part cannot be owned by the US entity since the US government can compel the US mother company to have it's subsidiary hand over data. In fact this is how most of the companies operate already to cheat on taxes. The way microsoft did it for a while here in Norway was to license azure cloud stuff to a sub operator (EVRY) that is completely insulated except for the licensing agreement.

MS did the same in Germany with Deutsche Telekom as a partner, that shut down around 2018 [1].

[1]: https://nextcloud.com/blog/microsoft-and-telekom-no-longer-o...

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

#186

Post by shadowgovt »

martijnvds wrote: post #39
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?

Self-hosting something is always going to be less complex, but you'll still need to determine what you're tracking and why, write that down in a form people can understand easily, and let people opt in explicitly (with a just-as-easy way to opt out later). People don't have to opt in for you to keep the data for technical reasons, for instance if you keep IP addresses for while to find and block abuse, but you can't…

What's the rule for aggregated data?

I track page view counts as simple sums, and it's not feasible to drop an individual user's page counts because I don't have enough info to identify a unique user. In fact, I put no cookies on the user's machine (but that means I have no way to identify a specific user for opt-out purposes for these aggregated page counts).

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

#187

Post by viro »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #15
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)

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#188

Post by Spivak »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #130
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…

The point is more nuanced: The problem is not the handing over (happens here too), but the fact EU citizens do not get informed this has happend and have no legal way to challenge this (especially concerning FISA/FISC). They have the opportunity to do so in the EU. Yes, this is what will happen with a setup of 3 entities, b/c FANG will not want to miss EU revenue.

Right but the solution is for there to be a treaty between the US and the EU that allows for this. Putting the burden on every foreign company to duplicate their infrastructure is stupid work to solve a human problem.

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

#189

Post by XCSme »

Semaphor wrote: post #126
XCSme wrote: post #108

Shameless plug: I have been building a self-hosted-only analytics platform for a long time: https://www.uxwizz.com . It looks like a good time to switch to self-hosted analytics.

Is it really such a rare occurrence for people to want to see statistics for a specific page or compare pages/articles? Because almost all new-wave analytics tools either do not support it, or it’s hidden and not easily discoverable.

To talk about UXWizz specifically, I try to implement only core stats (to not bloat the platform). But because you have access to the MySQL database directly, you can always create your own graphs on top of it or run a query to find the time spent on a specific page.

To give a concrete example, a such query would be, which would show all pages and the average time-on-page, ordered descending by time:

    SELECT MIN(page), AVG(TIME_TO_SEC(timediff(last_activity, date))) as avg_time
    FROM ust_clientpage 
    GROUP by page_hash
    ORDER BY avg_time DESC;

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

#190

Post by viro »

true_religion wrote: post #138
MereInterest wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That's why this whole thing is nothing but protectionism.
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