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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

#471

Post by fleddr »

mediascreen wrote: post #412

I think we (in the EU) will soon realise the bizarre consequences of these regulations. European startups will not be able to use standard SaaS or PaaS tools (like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc) if they are based in the US (like most of them are). No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. It will take forever to build up a similar ecosystem in Europe and I think most successful European entrepreneurs…

Nah, the tools will be adjusted to comply.

The EU combined is the largest economic region in the world. With backdrop the other huge one China where doing business has become increasingly difficult and volatile.

Tech giants cannot afford to pull out of the EU. Call their bluff, they won't. They can't even if they wanted to, as shareholders will skin them alive.

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

#472

Post by jimmaswell »

martin_a wrote: post #453
jimmaswell wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole set of laws is so absurd. I should have the right to retain my server logs as long as I want. I bet in the future in Europe people will have the right to have others' brains forcibly zapped to remove embarrassing memories.

I should have a right that you should not save my personal information longer than needed. Now what?

No, you shouldn't. If I make an observation, that's my observation, my data. I should have full rights to observations I made myself, regardless of if it involves you. Europe has this 100% backwards.

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

#473

Post by littlecranky67 »

cdot2 wrote: post #421
VikingCoder wrote: post #392

If someone adds http://blah.us "> to their website, and that image is hosted in the United States, how does that not also violate French data protection? The user's browser makes a request to a US server, including the user's IP address. I legit do not understand how to make French people happy with these laws.

I've been having to remove google fonts because we had some germans say we're breaking their laws by using them

To be fair, nowadays there is hardly any benefit. Since browsers use cache partitioning (mostly because CDNs were tracking users) there is no benefit in not serving it yourself (although yes, licensing restrictions now apply but there is plenty free fonts to use).

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

#474

Post by iicc »

someotherperson wrote: post #311
eps wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the privacy-first analytics tool Don't be coy. Call it what it is - an analytics service . And as such it falls largerly in the same bucket as GA, because if someone's using Simple Analytics, my surfing data - against my wishes - is being shared with some random third party. Whether it's less, more or comparably evil as GA is secondary.

Yes, and when you go shopping and pay with cash in a store with no surveillance, your shopping habits are being shared against your wishes with a random third party (the external company bookkeeper). It's disingenuous to have problems with websites collecting entirely anonymous browsing data -- that goes beyond any arguments for privacy and just steers into "yelling at clouds" territory.

>your shopping habits are being shared against your wishes with a random third party (the external company bookkeeper).

GDPR requires data sharing to be done for a defined purpose.

The purpose of sharing data with an external company bookkeeper for bookkeeping is not remotely connected to any purpose an analytics service fulfills. So while the shared data is capable of the same insights, it's explicitly illegal for it to be processed that way without a defined purpose (which is it's own can of worms).

>entirely anonymous browsing data

It's never entirely anonymous, because how useful data is, is inversely related to how anonymous it is.

ergo it would only be truly anonymous if it was truly useless.

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

#475

Post by tshaddox »

someotherperson wrote: post #311
eps wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the privacy-first analytics tool Don't be coy. Call it what it is - an analytics service . And as such it falls largerly in the same bucket as GA, because if someone's using Simple Analytics, my surfing data - against my wishes - is being shared with some random third party. Whether it's less, more or comparably evil as GA is secondary.

Yes, and when you go shopping and pay with cash in a store with no surveillance, your shopping habits are being shared against your wishes with a random third party (the external company bookkeeper). It's disingenuous to have problems with websites collecting entirely anonymous browsing data -- that goes beyond any arguments for privacy and just steers into "yelling at clouds" territory.

That’s bad too. There are also things happening in the world that are much worse, like people getting murdered. All these things can be bad at the same time.

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

#476

Post by merrywhether »

colordrops wrote: post #436
VikingCoder wrote: post #392

If someone adds http://blah.us "> to their website, and that image is hosted in the United States, how does that not also violate French data protection? The user's browser makes a request to a US server, including the user's IP address. I legit do not understand how to make French people happy with these laws.

By not embedding third party content on your site.

I’m guessing that if you are a US-based site then you are exempt and it’s only if you start an EU presence that you would need to worry about this?

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

#477

Post by silvercove »

cyral wrote: post #439
doctor_lollipop wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace I'm so looking forward to that.

What is the alternative? We are going to go back to 2005 where we send docs over email? Files end up being too large, nobody knows what the latest copy is, etc.

No post body was provided.

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

#479

Post by einpoklum »

nickpp wrote: post #387
vault wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA, of course. Don't forget you vote for your government, not for Google's CEO.

Google's CEO has pretty much ZERO powers over me. The USA government is (largely) democratic and (mostly) obeys laws. But my government... is not the one I voted for and I trust it 0%. Because I do not live in the West but in one of the great majority of countries with a corrupt, abusive government. The democratic governments of the West are the exception, not the rule.

> The USA government is (largely) democratic

Well, if I may nitpick, it's a federal republic rather than a democracy...

More to the point though, there was this study at Princeton U about the correlation between US government policy and popular opinion on a variety of subjects which found that public opinion correlates very poorly with government policy / legislation passed, but opinions among the very-rich correlate well. Can't remember the exact reference right now.

> and (mostly) obeys laws.

Oh, definitely not. It can well be argued that there is constant mass violation of the constitution. And regardless of this, the US is such a notorious outlaw on the international level that not only does it refuse to accept jurisdiction of the international criminal court, but has in fact threatened action against court staff if the court hears any case against it:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/03/15/us-threatens-internation...

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

#480

Post by tyfon »

cyral wrote: post #439
doctor_lollipop wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace I'm so looking forward to that.

What is the alternative? We are going to go back to 2005 where we send docs over email? Files end up being too large, nobody knows what the latest copy is, etc.

You can host this on-site :)

No need to go cloud everything. I think you can even buy the whole azure pack to run on-site.

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