Austrian DSB: Use of Google Analytics illegal

colak · 2022-01-14 10:12:00

The Austrian Data Protection Authority (“Datenschutzbehörde” or “DSB”) has decided that the continuous use of Google Analytics violates the GDPR. noyb.eu/en/austrian-dsb-eu-us-data-transfers-google-analytics-illegal

Destry · 2022-01-14 11:46:07

‘This is a very detailed and sound decision. The bottom line is: Companies can’t use US cloud services in Europe anymore. It has now been 1.5 years since the Court of Justice confirmed this a second time, so it is more than time that the law is also enforced.’ – Schrems

Would Cloudflare be considered a ‘cloud service’? The name would suggest so.

jakob · 2022-01-14 20:17:17

I doubt many people will change, but if any of you are interested in checking out the cookie-free and privacy-friendly simpleanalytics.io, you (and I) can get a month free (i.e. a 37 day trial rather than 7 days) if you use my affiliate link to sign up to simpleanalytics and decide to stick with them.

You can manage tracking for multiple sites on the base 9€/month with one account provided that together they don’t exceed 100,000 page views. It’s easy to set up and provides good basic stats. Benefits:

Cookie-free & privacy-friendly
GDPR compliant, no cookie consent bar required (for this at least)
Servers in the Netherlands
No personal data collected, no data sold. See what’s collected (tabular overview).
Route the script through an own subdomain if you want to prevent adblockers from blocking
Supports Do Not Track browser settings automatically

jayrope · 2022-03-12 10:45:37

Another interesting GDPR move: As of 20.1.22 the use of remote Google fonts in Germany (and probably the whole of EU) entitle website visitors to a recompensation of 100€ per visit, as IP/browser type visitor data transferred to Google servers isn’t fully under visitor control anymore. That means if you want to delete this data fully, you can’t. And you’re not being asked for consent either.

I am in favor of this legislation actually, and hosting fonts locally is easier than easy. Just tens of millions of Wordpress users don’t think so. Welcome to the responsibilities of owning a website :)

Jurisdiction here (auf Deutsch): https://rewis.io/urteile/urteil/lhm-20-01-2022-3-o-1749320/

Last edited by jayrope (2022-03-12 20:28:55)

bici · 2022-03-12 18:34:33

“remote Google fonts”
I always wondered why google was providing free access to web fonts. Now we know. It’s another way of harvesting user data.

jayrope · 2022-03-12 19:26:46

bici wrote #332894:

“remote Google fonts”
I always wondered why google was providing free access to web fonts. Now we know. It’s another way of harvesting user data.

Well, it’s been well known for a looooooong time (and including respective jurisdiction), that real-time cross-referencing meta data (IP, browser type, OS etc) helps identify people, when that same data is tracked elsewhere at the same time. And Google is just one bit of that industry. At the moment EU are mostly interestd in prevnting the flow of such data into countries, where web visitors can’t request data deletion (basically anywhere outside the EU).

While that seems an effort long overdue it is yet very clear, that privacy-disrespect is as active within the EU as anywhere else. And so this will need to be dealt with much more consequently here as well – and soon. For us coders it should be good practice already to be aware of this and not shovel all too many unnecessary & bloated 3rd party services into the websites of our clients. At least that is my personal ethics. Most sites i work on don’t need any third party services, so all is good.

Last edited by jayrope (2022-03-12 19:28:26)

phiw13 · 2022-03-13 04:10:47

jayrope wrote #332893:

Another interesting GDPR move: As of 20.1.22 the use of remote Google fonts in Germany (and probably the whole of EU) entitle website visitors to a recompensation of 100€ per visit, […]

Good. Very good. I’ve stopped long ago using that “service” – directly.

There are actually very few benefits of using third-party hosted fonts (and JS), except, maybe, download speed (browser’s cache partitioning, etc).

An easy way to download the fonts you want from the Google fonts library: use google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts.

towndock · 2022-03-13 22:16:24

All the fonts in the Google Fonts catalog (and there’s a lot of ‘em) are open source and free to use. You can easily download them, or embed them. Your choice. You can even use them for print. Free.

Google may not be Mother Theresa, but sometimes everything isn’t evil.

I use Google Analytics, on many sites. They are targeted at the US and Canada, which I’m hopeful will keep me from a visit to an Austrian jail.

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