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Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

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Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#421

Post by baconmania »

cm2012 wrote: post #228
googlryas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pragmatically, to what extent do you believe the European laws have protected Europeans above and beyond how American laws have protected Americans? Basically, what class of badness are Americans subjected to due to behind-the-times data protection laws, that Europeans are protected from?

You won't get a good answer to this because there isn't one. These no realistic, practical harm to people that this EU law is preventing.

Given your comment history, it’s clear that you’re driven by motivations that aren’t at all universal.

More bluntly, you’ve decided that consumer-surveillance-as-a-service is harmless. I’m thankful that the European regulatory apparatus disagrees. Now if only we could remind the American federal government why regulation is a worthwhile effort.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#422

Post by m3adow »

rambambram wrote: post #34
tin7in wrote: post #12

We are based in Europe and self-host our analytics exactly for this reason. I feel this is just the beginning.

Congrats. We also chose to do the analytics ourselves. No tracking, no cookie banners, and probably better stats as well. One thing that Google did very cleverly was to only give GA users the search terms that visitors used to end up on their site.

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

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#423

Post by y42 »

digitalengineer wrote: post #121
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.

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.

Like Adobe, who uses tracking servers in the EU, but Data Processing happens in the US?

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#424

Post by Noughmad »

inlined wrote: post #201
Noughmad wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually quite simple. The government can buy things services from specific providers, but it cannot force you to buy services from specific providers. In other words, it can buy BMWs for government use, but it cannot say "you have to buy a BMW to enter the municipal office". The same applies to websites. If a government website uses Google analytics, it is essentially requiring you to do business with a specifi…

And if the government uses Cloudflare or GoDaddy or aws it’s requiring you to do business with those companies. This goal is impossible to achieve with any government run service.

No, those do not see any benefit from me visiting the site beyond what the government is paying them for. Analytics does, they get my data.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#425

Post by speedgoose »

dehrmann wrote: post #415
baq wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

take data of your USA customers and sell it to the highest bidder without their consent or even knowledge as you please. don't complain that I have the right to know you do that and disagree to you doing that.

Google doesn't really sell user data.

No, it’s too valuable. They sell services using the data such as Google ads.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#426

Post by y42 »

dudus wrote: post #365
rgbrenner wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gdpr uses a more expansive definition of personal data, and it includes the IP address and geolocation data, for example.

And to be clear Google Analytics has a setting to "anonymize" the IP address which deletes the last octet of the address and makes geolocation less accurate. Then there's an argument that the IP address still reaches Google servers before it's deleted. But that's just splitting hairs at this point. If Google doesn't process the data with IP the IP address I see no harm. IP addresses are not something that you can cho…

I guess the difference here is, that I want to visit a website in the US versus a tracking request, that happens in the background.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#427

Post by [deleted] »

makeitdouble wrote: post #404
freyr wrote: post #399

I’m supporting of privacy, but it’s amazing how heavy-handed European regulation can be, and how difficult it can make understanding even basic metrics about our business and how those metrics have shifted over time. I suppose their intentions are good though.

Suppose you had an internal tracking library, aggragating data fetch from your own site and mobile clients, all data saved in a data center managed by your country's most reliable provider. EU directives would be a no-brainer. That scenario has always been an option, and would be the most common case if Google didn't provide their own service for free or at cost. What's happening with the EU feels disruptive only bec…

[deleted]

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#429

Post by y42 »

m3adow wrote: post #422
rambambram wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats. We also chose to do the analytics ourselves. No tracking, no cookie banners, and probably better stats as well. One thing that Google did very cleverly was to only give GA users the search terms that visitors used to end up on their site.

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.

Re: Italian watchdog bans use of Google Analytics

#430

Post by wonderbore »

marcosdumay wrote: post #149
googlryas wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that not fully legal? Wouldn't the same law prevent Google USA from querying PII data from Google Italia?

Italian laws do not apply to Google USA.

Oh yes they do. GA is part of a company that also sells services in Italy. They should follow the law if they want to keep earning that non-US Adwords money that allows GA to remain free.
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