Google Analytics goes illegal in some European countries
Breaking news: US online services are no longer permitted to transfer European citizens’ privacy data to US servers because of clear violation of the European GDPR law.
On 12th of January 2022, The Austrian Data Protection Authority ruled that Google data transfer to US is illegal because Google is unable to provide an acceptable level of protection under Article 44 GDPR.
This Austrian ruling can now bring more cases in other European countries making thousand of business look for compliant alternatives to gather user analytics.
In fact, if you’re a European company, the risks of using Google Analytics are the following:
- Financial: you might get a substantial fine
- Reputation damage: users are more and more aware of their privacy rights and might turn to privacy aware competitors
- Block of the website: Data Protection authorities may block websites using Google Analytics
The most important thing to remember from this case is that ignoring these court rulings and continuing to use Google Analytics is not a viable option. You should consider removing Google Analytics from your websites immediately and replacing it with an alternative.
“Instead of actually adapting services to be GDPR compliant, US companies have tried to simply add some text to their privacy policies and ignore the Court of Justice. Many EU companies have followed the lead instead of switching to legal options.”
Max Schrems
Now it is time to act. I’ve come up with a list containing some of the best data protection compliant alternatives to the most popular Google Analytics product.
Fathom
Fathom gets a different paradigm about how to give you useful website stats without tracking personal data of your users. Instead, it gives you detailed information about trends and insights. Fathom invests in world’s leading privacy law experts to make their service GDPR, ePrivacy, PECR, CCPA, and COPPA compliant.
Register for an account with Fathom
Clicky
Why you should consider using Clicky as your website traffic analytics provider? There are over 1.3 million website owners currently using Clicky to monitor their traffic. It is also GDPR compliant and anonymise visitor IP addresses by default.