Website and privacy: is your website legally compliant?

In Italy as well as in the rest of the European Union, GDPR, the European Data Protection Regulation, has been in force since 2019.

Everyone's personal data must be processed by those who collect it in a legal manner, and everyone has a number of rights over his or her data.

Everyone with a website, i.e. many companies and businesses, both public and private, must also comply with the GDPR.

Almost everyone who has a website has been using Google Analytics for a long time, i.e. a Google service that collects all the data on internet use to process algorithms and give other useful information to companies, but also to keep it! That's why if you search on the internet for 'brioche', advertisements for bakeries near that appear shortly afterwards.

Since Google Analytics 3, as well as other similar services, transmits the collected data outside the European Union, it eludes GDPR compliance, because adequate levels of privacy security are not guaranteed.

The European Court of Justice has intervened, but above all the Italian Garante Privacy with its decision of 9 June 2022 number 224. As in other European countries, a maximum term of 90 days was given to website owners to discontinue the use of Google Analytics 3 or other software which transmits data collected on servers located outside the European Union (specifically in the USA) and find alternative technical solutions.

The Privacy Guarantee Authority has announced that it will carry out checks; anyone still using this software risks heavy penalties. Not everyone pays the necessary attention to this news, but it is really important to adapt. 

Therefore, I urge all companies and website owners to check their situation, including in particular the information on cookies, which often states that the data holder uses Google Analytics3 or similar services.

Last update Nov 2022