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Use of Google Analytics declared illegal by French data protection authority

cnil.fr

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

#641

Post by jimmaswell »

cycomanic wrote: post #580
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.

The whole point is that "your" logs contain personal data about others. That data is theirs not yours. Moreover if you get asked about "your" logs by the US government you have to hand "their" data over to them, for which there is no legal recourse for the person owning the data. To make this more obvious, the EU is essentially saying that you can create a post service that routes all their letters through the US whe…

> That data is theirs not yours.

I fundamentally disagree. You can't come to my house with a red hat then demand I never tell anybody you have a red hat and forget I saw it. That's absurd.

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

#642

Post by withinboredom »

toqy wrote: post #608
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd help if the United States wasn't allowed to aggressively brain drain most of the rest of the world.

The rest of the world could also brain drain the US if it was easier to get into. The US -> EU/UK immigrants that I personally know have had a pretty hard time getting there permanently.

I moved from the US to the NL. Love it but I can’t get dual citizenship and getting permanent residence requires knowing the language well enough to pass a test, so why stay? It’s kind of a bummer because my son speaks native-fluent Dutch now. Next up will probably be Ireland.

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

#643

Post by belorn »

brianwawok wrote: post #599
wongarsu wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc [...] No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but imho AWS, GCP and Azure are popular with startups because of their generous free credits, not because they are good tools for startups. As a startup you are typically better served by a DigitalOcean-level of complexity, and there are plenty of such offers in the EU (Hetzner Cloud, Grids…

> As a startup you are typically better served by a DigitalOcean-level of complexity, and there are plenty of such offers in the EU (Hetzner Cloud, Gridscale, OVH, etc) As an actual startup founder who started as a 1 man startup, strongly disagree. Spent maybe $200 a month on Google Cloud, got an actual production ready cluster. Scaled up to Millions in revenue, never had to deal with any Linux Server admin BS. More…

I would guess that if costs is an issue then it must also be balanced compared to the potential profits. If your current $200 solution only allowed you to have US customers, while a $300 solution would allow you to have both US and EU customers, which one would you choose?

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

#644

Post by RIMR »

nickpp wrote: post #393
tokai wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely USA. My government doesn't drone strike people based on communication patterns or disappear them to black sites without ever being put in front of a judge.

Are you afraid USA would drone strike or disappear you if they get to your private data? Do you think that is a valid concern for most people?

I'm not worried about most people, I'm worried about the people that the USA does go after, because the USA usually goes after good people who rightfully criticized what they're doing.

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

#645

Post by xdennis »

nickpp wrote: post #344
einpoklum wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, a French website which keeps private information about its users must not - ethically, morally - use US services which are accessible to US intelligence agencies. That is irrespective of any legislation or court rulings, it's just common sense.

I wonder who are people more afraid of exposing their private information to: the USA or their own government.

> I wonder who are people more afraid of exposing their private information to: the USA or their own government.

The USA, because, at least in principle, every individual has some manner of influence over his own government.

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

#646

Post by Rebelgecko »

jkaptur wrote: post #639
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?

The cnil.fr page hosting this article seems to use self-hosted piwik, which is a good sign that the regulators think it's ok. (I wonder why they need to collect analytics information for this page at all.)

It's only ok if you self-host on a server in the EU, right? It'll be interesting when different regions of the world start having mutually exclusive laws about where data has to be stored.

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

#647

Post by RustyConsul »

mmastrac wrote: post #609
zaptrem wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they need now is some sort of ISP level filter to make sure nobody loses their privacy to US servers. They could call it a "Great Firewall" maybe.

Protecting the privacy of citizens is not akin to society-wide censorship, a la China. This is a disingenuous argument.

Kind of. I'm still losing my ability to choose.

I've often found the slippery slope 'Fallacy' to not be so much of a fallacy in reality when it comes to power.

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

#648

Post by jalk »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #625
wongarsu wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like AWS, Azure, Mailchimp, PayPal etc [...] No cloud services, no Office 365 or Google Workspace. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but imho AWS, GCP and Azure are popular with startups because of their generous free credits, not because they are good tools for startups. As a startup you are typically better served by a DigitalOcean-level of complexity, and there are plenty of such offers in the EU (Hetzner Cloud, Grids…

All Office docs contain a GUID that's closer to PII than an IP address.

Can't find any references to that except that each doc has a GUID. A GUID on its own is not PII - just some random number, so are you implying that MS collects every GUID along with author identifiable information?

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

#649

Post by leobg »

One thing I find super crazy is that, while making a big fuss about IP addresses and cookies, the EU forces any website owner to publicly share his full name, address and phone number on the site’s imprint.

If you’re not a corporation or a professional who has an office address, you’ll have to supply your own personal data. Visible to anyone on the internet.

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

#650

Post by iamacyborg »

dgudkov wrote: post #464
iamacyborg wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send your ad traffic to a specific landing page - monitor anonymised hits to that page. Send you ad traffic to a unique form per campaign so you know what campaign is generating leads. This isn't rocket science.

That would count clicks, not conversions such as downloads or signups that can require going on another page or doing some other action. Not everything can be put on one page. Also, Google Adwords counts conversions for visits for 30 days. Which means on the 1st visit from the ad campaign, there can be no immediate conversion (and that's OK). But if the same person returns to the website (not from the ad) and downloa…

> downloads

Track hits on a post-download URL

> signups

Count signups in your DB with a source from a hidden field on the form

> Also, Google Adwords counts conversions for visits for 30 days

This stuff is mostly meaningless.

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