No adequate safeguards for data transfers to the USA
A website using Google Analytics (GA) without the safeguards set out in the EU GDPR violates data protection law because it transfers users’ data to the USA, which is a country without an adequate level of data protection.
The Italian SA came to this conclusion after a complex fact-finding exercise it had started in close coordination with other EU data protection authorities following complaints it had received. The Italian SA found that the website operators using GA collected, via cookies, information on user interactions with the respective websites, visited pages and services on offer. The multifarious set of data collected in this connection included the user device IP address along with information on browser, operating system, screen resolution, selected language, date and time of page viewing. This information was found to be transferred to the USA. In determining that the processing was unlawful, the Italian SA reiterated that an IP address is a personal data and would not be anonymised even if it were truncated – given Google’s capabilities to enrich such data through additional information it holds.
