Google Analytics, the world’s most generally used Web analytics service developed by Alphabet’s Google, dangers giving US intelligence companies entry to French web site customers’ knowledge, France’s watchdog CNIL mentioned on Thursday.

In a choice focusing on an unnamed French web site supervisor, the info privateness regulator – one of the crucial vocal and influential in Europe – mentioned the US tech big hadn’t taken ample measures to ensure knowledge privateness rights below European Union regulation when knowledge was transferred between Europe and the United States.

“These (measures) are not sufficient to exclude the accessibility of this data to US intelligence services,” the regulator mentioned in a press release.

“There is therefore a risk for French website users who use this service and whose data is exported.”

The CNIL mentioned that the French web site supervisor in query had one month to adjust to EU regulation and that it had issued comparable orders to different web site operators.

Google declined to touch upon the CNIL determination. The agency has beforehand mentioned that Google Analytics would not observe individuals throughout the Internet and that organisations utilizing this instrument have management over the info they gather.

The CNIL’s determination follows the same one by its Austrian counterpart, coming after complaints by Vienna-based noyb (Non Of Your Business), an advocacy group based by Austrian lawyer and privateness activist Max Schrems who received a excessive profile case with Europe’s high court docket in 2020.

The Court of Justice of the European Union at the moment scrapped a transatlantic knowledge switch deal generally known as the Privacy Shield, relied on by 1000’s of firms for companies starting from cloud infrastructure to payroll and finance, due to comparable considerations.

Several giant firms, together with Google and Meta’s Facebook, have referred to as for a brand new transatlantic knowledge switch pact to be swiftly agreed due to the authorized dangers posed to them.

“In the long run we either need proper protections in the United States, or we will end up with separate products for the US and the EU,” Schrems mentioned in response to CNIL’s determination.

“I would personally prefer better protections in the US, but this is up to the US legislator – not to anyone in Europe. “

© Thomson Reuters 2022