Google has previously stated that Google Analytics does not track people across the Internet.
Google Analytics, the world’s most widely used web analytics service developed by Alphabet’s Google, risks giving US intelligence services access to French website users’ data, French watchdog CNIL said. said on Thursday.
In a decision targeting an unnamed French website manager, the data privacy regulator – one of the most vocal and influential in Europe – said the US tech giant did not take adequate measures to guarantee data privacy rights under EU regulation when the data was transferred in between. Europe and the United States.
“These (measures) are not sufficient to exclude access of this data to US intelligence services,” the regulator said in a statement.
“Therefore the French website is a risk to users who use this service and whose data is exported.”
CNIL said the French website manager had a month to comply with EU regulations and had issued similar orders to other website operators.
Google declined to comment on CNIL’s decision. The firm has previously stated that Google Analytics does not track people on the Internet and that organizations using this tool have control over the data they collect.
An advocacy group founded by Austrian lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems, which won a high-profile case with Europe’s top court in 2020, following complaints from Vienna-based Noyb (Knowoff Your Business) CNIL’s decision by its Austrian counterpart was similar. Is. ,
At the time an EU Court of Justice struck down a transatlantic data transfer deal known as Privacy Shield, which relied on thousands of companies for services ranging from cloud infrastructure to payroll and finance, due to similar concerns.
Several large companies, including Google and Meta’s Facebook, have called for speedy consent to a new transatlantic data transfer agreement due to legal risks.
“In the long run we either need proper protection in the United States, or we will end up with different products for the US and the EU,” Schrems said in response to CNIL’s decision.
“I personally would prefer better security in the US, but that’s up to the US legislator – not anyone in Europe.”
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