Google Analytics Poses Data Privacy Risks: French Watchdog

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 stated on Thursday.

In a call concentrating on an unnamed French web site supervisor, the information privateness regulator – probably the most vocal and influential in Europe – stated the US tech large hadn’t taken enough measures to ensure knowledge privateness rights underneath 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 stated in an announcement.

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

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

Google declined to touch upon the CNIL determination. The agency has beforehand stated that Google Analytics does not observe individuals throughout the Internet and that organisations utilizing this instrument have management over the information they accumulate.

The CNIL’s determination follows an identical 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 gained a excessive profile case with Europe’s prime courtroom in 2020.

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

Several giant corporations, 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 stated 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