Google has just been exposed to some bad news that comes from Europe, but news may be worse for website owners than for Google itself. In an unprecedented case, the court in Austria has just decided that Google Analytics violates European data protection laws. As a result, Google Analytics has been made illegally in Austria.
Everything returns to general data protection regulations (GDPR) observed in Europe. Implemented in 2018, GDPR was created to provide European citizens more control over their personal data, both online and offline. Unfortunately, the GDPR and US surveillance laws are not mixed.
According to the decision conducted by 2020 by the European Union Policy Justice Court (CJEU,) which forced the provider of websites in the US to provide personal user data to the authorities against GDPR. Even though this might not be related to Google Analytics at first glance, very much. Some information that is ready to be collected by US providers directly violates with GDPR, which in theory means that this website must stop gathering personal information in order to operate legally in Europe. In practice, it seems not much has changed since 2018.
Before 2020, a law called a privacy shield was in a place that allowed European data to be transferred to the United States. However, the shield was invalid by CJEU on July 16, 2020. Since then, US-based websites are not permitted to transfer European citizen data to the US. Of course, this only applies to data under GDPR, which only includes information that can be identified about certain people. However, according to FieldFisher, this also includes IP addresses, because they are considered “online identifiers.”
Apart from 2020 verdicts made by CJEU, many providers continue to send personal data to the US – including Google Analytics. As stated by Schrems Max, the honorary seat of NOYB, Nonprofit Europe focuses on digital rights, “Instead of actually adapting services to GDPR compliant, US companies have tried to only add some text to their privacy policies and ignore the court of justice. Many companies The UE follows the tin instead of turning to the legal option. “
The Austrian data protection authority has now followed up with what is managed by CJEU in 2020 and utilizing Google Analytics is fully illegal. The verdict applies immediately, so all websites that serve Austria need to act quickly so as not to be fined for violating local law.
