For those that missed it and are interested, there was a similar HN discussion around a German GDPR ruling last week. It already has quite a large debate and a lot of opinions on the matter:
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
#42So I can take follow someone in public, take picture of them in public places from some distance, follow them into stores, see what they are spending and what they are using, etc. Store owners can have cameras, track the behaviour of customers, etc
But if I use a service which anonymously tracks which pages they opened on a website they voluntarily visited and are exploring, then I'm in trouble?
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#43So I can take follow someone in public, take picture of them in public places from some distance, follow them into stores, see what they are spending and what they are using, etc. Store owners can have cameras, track the behaviour of customers, etc But if I use a service which anonymously tracks which pages they opened on a website they voluntarily visited and are exploring, then I'm in trouble?
You're also in trouble if you send the data you collect by other methods without consent, to servers based in the USA for NSA to snoop around on and correlate with all their other data points.
Unless your argument is "but how would they know about it", in which case that applies to any other crime.
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#44So I can take follow someone in public, take picture of them in public places from some distance, follow them into stores, see what they are spending and what they are using, etc. Store owners can have cameras, track the behaviour of customers, etc But if I use a service which anonymously tracks which pages they opened on a website they voluntarily visited and are exploring, then I'm in trouble?
No, you can't stalk people.
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#45I 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)
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 everything about everybody's behaviour everywhere.
Then Google put out Google analytics and I just switched my sites to this thing. I didn't mind all that much because it was Google and do no evil was still a thing.
But GDPR is something that reminds me of how ridiculous things we accepted as if they were normal just because they were technically feasible.
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#46Earlier 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.
You don't need GA for a website either. Many websites probably don't even need any form of analytics at all.
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#47Is 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!
Some courts beg to disagree with your position:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_f...
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#48I 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.
Seriously? People spend tons money and time to track users. If you want to be GDPR-compliant, simply don't save unnecessary userdata and if you still feel the urge to do so, give users the option to control it. It's that easy. Any problems you get from it are of your own making.
> Especially with these European intentions I frankly believe this is more of a political war against US and US-based companies
We created the GDPR, but then knee-capped it with safe harbor. Then Schrems sued and the courts dropped it, but the EU simply reinstated it under the name privacy shield. Then Shrems sued again and after having to have a legal battle again, it unsurprisingly turns out that it's still illegal. I can't see how you think of the EU as anything but overly lenient.
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#49There 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 for about 10 months when they raised the incident. It was such a low priority that it took another 4 months for someone to fix it.
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?
How many marketing teams/sales teams/etc actually use ALL the information provided by these tools. Aren't there other better ways to measure your campaign and product performance? Do you just want to see time on site/page? Abandon rate? I mean, most of these tools feel like they concentrate the Western mentality of "I need an SUV because I might have to put in more than 2 bags in my car".
/endRant
Re: Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority
#50So I can take follow someone in public, take picture of them in public places from some distance, follow them into stores, see what they are spending and what they are using, etc. Store owners can have cameras, track the behaviour of customers, etc But if I use a service which anonymously tracks which pages they opened on a website they voluntarily visited and are exploring, then I'm in trouble?
You are in trouble in both cases.