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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

#551

Post by pphysch »

usr1106 wrote: post #500
someotherperson wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you pay by cash the shop has no personal data about you.

Not necessarily, they might have timestamps and register # that could be correlated to build a "unsupervised" profile of a customer.

Extreme case: you are the only person that ever buys product X around time Y, so that fact can be used as an anchor to build a profile.

You need to be way more paranoid if you want to be a true privacy warrior.

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

#552

Post by jen20 »

nickpp wrote: post #309
jen20 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely like the ability to pay for services which do not track or advertise to me. But they don't exist for the most part, and the existence of those services does nothing to diminish the requirement of the ones engaging in poor practice to make their service "free" to obtain _consent_ for what they are doing.

> But they don't exist for the most part And the current privacy laws in EU make the free services illegal. How is that any better than the scenario where paid services did not exist?

Because privacy is maintained for those that want it, and those that don't know they want it.

Free services may exist perfectly well:

- They must not invade privacy without obtaining consent

- They must not transfer personal information to jurisdictions with privacy controls which are too lax.

If a business relies on doing either of those two things, it deserves all the problems it has.

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

#553

Post by keewee7 »

swlkr wrote: post #498

The EU privacy regulations seem to have a side effect of creating a de facto EU internet, where EU competitors can become dominant because they pay closer attention to changes in law vs north american or chinese counterparts. It’s almost like a more subtle version of china or russia’s firewall

The goal is to create European state enterprises to replace Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc. These privacy regulations were championed by socialist MEPs.

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

#554

Post by Ensorceled »

simion314 wrote: post #362
germanier wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it's perfectly legal (and usual practice) to contract out the operation of people counting devices that just tally up how many persons go through a door. (By the way, a gym can and usually does share contract data including personal information with numerous third-parties such as external bookkeepers. This is legal under the GDPR without explicit consent.)

>By the way, a gym can and usually does share contract data with numerous third-parties such as external bookkeepers. This is perfectly legal under the GDPR) Why is it legal, does the gym need those 100 contractors to know my data for it to work? What are those for 100 different accountants? How did gyms or other businesses worked before the internet, did a guy walked to 100 different locations with papers in hand so…

The bookkeeper literally needs access to receipts and invoices to do their job. No bookkeeper is going to work from an anonymous list of payments; that's how you get swept up in a money laundering raid.

Before the internet, the owner took a shoe box of receipts to their bookkeeper every month. Those receipts had your name, date, etc. on them.

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

#555

Post by neuronflux »

mnw21cam wrote: post #357
axiosgunnar wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter one single bit, they are still the 100% subsidiary of Alphabet which is legally bound to provide data at the request of US gov agencies.

Microsoft has seen this one - they have a subsidiary in the EU that holds the EU data. Yes, the US-based parent company is legally bound to provide the data at the request of the US gov agencies. However, the only way that they can get hold of that data is to ask the EU subsidiary nicely. The EU subsidiary is legally bound to not hand that data over.

Do you know if Microsoft setup this EU shell after the whole thing with the FBI wanting emails stored in Ireland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._United_Stat... (2016) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act (2018).

If so, it might end up in court again, and we'll have to see how that precedent gets set out. Will be curious to see how this plays out.

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

#556

Post by TomGullen »

ironman1 wrote: post #216

There is a privacy-first alternative called: https://simpleanalytics.com/

So what primary key are these other analytics using if not IP? (Their docs say they don't store IPs but do store user agents). It looks like it's based on browser fingerprinting - if I'm right OK it's not an IP but it's not much better and if things keep going the way they are pretty sure this will be up for the chop in the future.

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

#557

Post by tilolebo »

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…

We already had a good sneak peek in Germany, when schools closed last year for some weeks due to the pandemic.

Popular video conferencing solutions weren't allowed due to privacy issues. The official "Lernraum" platform that have been used for this did not work most of the time.

I understand where these laws come from, but it's sad that there often is no European alternative

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

#558

Post by things »

weissed wrote: post #431
AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #233

For who needs a summary of what is happening in the EU [1] 1. Since 2020, it's illegal to send personal data to the US because of the invalidation of the Privacy Shield [2] 2. Google said it was okay in the EU to use anonymized IP addresses 3. The Austrian Data Protection Authority (DSB) [3] ruled differently and waived most of the arguments raised by Google. The DSB ruled that even anonymized IP addresses are person…

> The Austrian Data Protection Authority (DSB) [3] ruled differently and waived most of the arguments raised by Google. The DSB ruled that even anonymized IP addresses are personal data. Why are anonymised IP addresses still considered "Personal Data"? Is it because Google is doing the anonymisation?

I believe the issue isn't specifically with anonymised IP addresses in GA. The problem is that the Google Analytics code is loaded from a third party server and, to do that, this server gets your IP address even if the data sent by the GA code itself contains an anonymised one.

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

#559

Post by altairprime »

judge2020 wrote: post #343
axiosgunnar wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter one single bit, they are still the 100% subsidiary of Alphabet which is legally bound to provide data at the request of US gov agencies.

Is that really the only reason behind GA being 'banned'? If google broke off Ireland ltd into its own company and that company simply 'licensed' Google products for $1, would they be in the clear?

Unlikely. The EU courts would reasonably be expected to decide that, as Google Ireland is merely a sham corp for the purpose of operating a codebase that is wholly deferred to the same US control (just as before the sham corp), that this is equivalent to the prior arrangement and still illegal.

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

#560

Post by TomGullen »

openplatypus wrote: post #382

Luckily there is plenty to choose from. We entered the market recently with Wide Angle Analytics https://wideangle.co . But there is plenty alternatives. Depending on your needs. Some focus on visuals, we focus on filters and soon attribution. There is more on the list: https://european-alternatives.eu/category/web-analytics-serv... Competition is a healthy thing. You DON'T HAVE TO use Google Analytics :) And if you…

So what primary key does WideAngle use to track users across sessions? It mentions anonymised IP? Isn't that what Google do?

You mention you store anonymised IP's "Unlike some other vendors, our anonymization process is not reversible.", what is the methodology here?

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