Companies in the European Union will have to remove Google Analytics from their websites or face fines for violating the GDPR.
The Austrian Data Protection Authority has stated that the use of the Google Analytics statistics collection system violates the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and poses a privacy risk.
NOYB (none of your business) founder Max Schrems, who successfully sued Facebook for violating the privacy of European citizens in the past, scored another victory, this time against Google. According to a court decision, Google Analytics is declared illegal for use on European websites.
The story began on August 14, 2020, when Max Schrems went to an Austrian site dedicated to health problems. The website used Google Analytics and the user data was sent to Google. With the help of the collected data, the tech giant was able to identify the user. On August 18, 2020, Schrems complained to the Austrian data protection authority.
During the trial, which lasted about two years, it became known that Google “is subject to surveillance by US intelligence agencies, and companies may be ordered to disclose the data of European citizens.” The collection of personal data was supposedly carried out using cookies.
The consequences could be far-reaching. Although the complaint concerned only one website publisher, it was one of 101 complaints filed at the same time a year and a half ago by NOYB. This massive offensive has prompted EU data protection authorities to coordinate their actions, so there is a good chance that up to 100 such decisions will be made.
If so, then websites operating in Europe would have a strong hurdle to stop using Google Analytics and other cloud services in the US.
Many companies in Europe may have to remove Google Analytics from their sites or risk being fined for violating the GDPR.
According to Google, in 15 years, US law enforcement agencies have never filed a request to provide information collected using Google Analytics. In addition, the tech giant invited the EU and US authorities to agree on a new data exchange model.
Let me remind you that we also wrote that Google developers told how they will implement Manifest V3.
You might also be interested to know that Hackers attacked Microsoft Exchange servers of the European Banking Authority.
