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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

#671

Post by EnKopVand »

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…

I wouldn’t worry too much about AWS or Azure. When AWS realised how much money the European Public Sector spends on the public cloud a good few years back they went from being behind Azure in terms of complaisance to now being ahead.

I’m Danish and as we’re a notorious Microsoft country I have the most experience with everything Azure, but the fact that Amazon was so quick to ensure that 100% of the workers who ever come near the services they sell within the EU are EU citizens is something that we still looks somewhat envious toward. It’s actually an area where Microsoft might eventually run into some trouble if they don’t work on their compliance but I can certainly understand how it’s hard when one of their key selling points to Enterprise is that we can call Redmund.

I don’t think the EU will get into much trouble over this, however, and I don’t think it will have too much of an impact on our tech industry. I do agree that it’s not likely to help European alternatives to Microsoft or Amazon, but that’s not exactly the point or the legalisation is it? It’s there to prevent EU citizens and our personal information from becoming the primary commodity that is sold between giant companies.

Advertisement companies like Google will no doubt struggle with this going forward, but is that really a loss for anyone?

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

#672

Post by DocTomoe »

mediascreen wrote: post #509
brahadeesh wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If this make European startups build their own ecosystem and provides me with an alternative for the services I use but don't track me, I'm going to switch - simple as. I see this as a win for the internet.

Why limit it to the EU? Shouldn't every country have their own AWS, Azure and Google Cloud? I think we underestimate just how difficult it is just to replicate existing services, let alone keep up with the innovation. It's like the Argentinian effort to stimulate its own computer manufacturing by banning Apple products.

> Why limit it to the EU? Shouldn't every country have their own AWS, Azure and Google Cloud?

Careful, there is such a thing as network effect for knowledge. More fractured systems mean more different approaches means less aftermarket documentation means less people being able to work for you.

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

#673

Post by jmconfuzeus »

For people interested in hosting their own Plausible analytics instance. Use this Ansible bundle[0] against your Debian 11 server.

It takes a few minutes to complete and you can start tracking visits in a privacy friendly manner quickly.

[0]https://github.com/confuzeus/ansible-plausible

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

#674

Post by remram »

Dave3of5 wrote: post #133

Don't quite understand this at all. Can we cut through the clickbait and see what's wrong here. If my website askes users for their permission to use GA and they click yes then is that still illegal here? I see this as yes it's still illegal. Also is it illegal because there is an anonymised id number created when you send data. If that's the case then it's not just GA that's a problem but any tracking system i.e. Pl…

If they can say no and can still use the website, you are definitely in the clear.

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

#675

Post by viro »

jen20 wrote: post #582
viro wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should every US tech company be expected to duplicate its infrastructure in the EU? Google isn't special, this applies to EVERY US-based competitor to GA. This gives EU competitors an unfair advantage.... and that's the real point.

Because the US cannot implement reasonable privacy laws that give basic safeguards to personal information expected by EU citizens (or even UK citizens). If anything, EU competitors to Google Analytics are at a _disadvantage_ because they can't apply the same lassaiz-faire techniques for US-based customers that US-based companies get away with.

No post body was provided.

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

#676

Post by zwaps »

jeffbee wrote: post #359
rolisz wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, it's a myth that Switzerland is so privacy oriented. They have laws saying that the Swiss intelligence services can access all data, so it wouldn't help. And Switzerland is not part of the EU.

Both Swiss and German people seem completely deluded about the activities of their own governments and intelligence agencies.

Why tho? Do you think German citizens have more privacy in Germany than in the US, where the US legislature clearly states that non US citizens have zero privacy rights whatsoever?

I don't think it's delusion, I think it is literally correct.

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

#677

Post by galgot »

jurmous wrote: post #31
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?

We host Matomo (formerly called Piwik) ourselves. And we also host the fonts we use ourselves. Since we are a healthcare based startup we prefer not to share any data outside of our controlled servers. We even disabled the cookie based tracking inside Matomo at the cost of not linking different visit sessions. Same session visits are fully tracked though. Saves us a cookie warning.

Funny thing... I went on their site (fr.matomo.org here in France) using Safari. All images are not displayed (? on each images). Tried on Firefox, displays the images fine... Checked what kind of images are these, all .webp ! :D They have improvements to do if they want to be "google free" themselves...

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

#678

Post by geoduck14 »

jalk wrote: post #648
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I just got off the phone with a lawyer to talk about this exact issue.

If the GUID is related to the user (like user ID), then it is Personal Information - EVEN if the GUID is random. The distinction that is easy to miss is that a User ID GUID might be very low risk (compared to, say actual User Id or user name) - but is is still Personal Information.

If the GUID is for the document (and anyone can edit the document), then it is no longer PI.

Of course, all of this ignores things like the contents of the doc. If the doc is "SSNs of my customers", well... don't do that

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

#679

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

We colocate about 20 servers and in any given month, spend no more than 1 person-days worth of time dealing with it. Many months we spend no time. That includes both sysadmin and hardware. But this requires knowledge that most devs these days probably don't have.

We might spend more time messing around with AWS than our colocated servers.

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

#680

Post by brianwawok »

kroolik wrote: post #629
brianwawok wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Just make sure your BCP plan includes other provides. HN is full of stories where peoples' accounts are blocked with no reason and without means of effective contact.

That is consumer accounts, not business accounts at GCP. People confuse personal gmail with paid GCP. I have actual reps I can talk to.
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