Google Analytics banned in several European countries due to GDPR violations
In yet another blow to Google Analytics in Europe, the Italian data protection authority found that a local web publisher’s use of it violated GDPR rules. As a result, the popular analytics tool has been declared illegal in Italy after being banned in France and Austria earlier this year.
After fielding some complaints, the Italian SA began a complicated fact-finding process in close coordination with other EU data protection agencies. The Italian SA found that website owners using Google Analytics recorded user interactions, visited pages, and offered services via cookies. The data collected were the IP address, browser, operating system, screen resolution, language, date, and time of page viewing. This data was then sent to the US. The Italian SA determined that the processing was unconstitutional since an IP address is personal data and would not be anonymized even if abbreviated, given Google’s ability to augment such data with additional information.
Source: Google Analytics banned in several European countries due to GDPR violations
