Italian regulators have decided to ban the use of Google Analytics, citing the US government’s easy access to consumer data, which puts the service in violation of European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws.
That means that millions of users’ online behavior will no longer be visible to the SEO platform.
Italy’s Privacy Guarantor found that a collection of user IP addresses, as well as browsing and operating system, screen resolution, and selected language, in addition to the date and time the user visited a site, was being transferred to the US by Google Analytics without GDPR-mandated privacy protections.
Website operators inside Italy have 90 days to review their Google Analytics use to ensure data privacy compliance, the Privacy Guarantor ruled.
The ruling follows similar actions taken by French and Austrian authorities.
