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by snowwrestler 1460 days ago
That Google documentation is for the IP anonymization feature of Universal Analytics, which is being sunset in about a year.

Google announced earlier this year that Google Analytics 4, its successor, does not log or store IP address at all.

I don’t know whether UA or GA4 service was the subject of the Italy case, but I would not be surprised if it was UA. Most sites have not switched over to GA4 yet.
2 comments
autoexec 1460 days ago
> Google announced earlier this year that Google Analytics 4, its successor, does not log or store IP address at all.

So if I go to a website and it has me load code from Google's servers it's still got to send my IP address to them. I'm not sure why we'd take them at their word that they won't keep that data around (I'd like to see that independently verified). but it'll be sent to the server logs if nothing else. What does not storing the IP address even mean? Do they hash it and store that instead? Do they do a quick lookup and just flag your dossier logging the connection and when it happened before dropping the IP info?

If people care about their privacy I think it's probably best not to send information to Google in the first place. There are alternatives to google analytics after all.

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closewith 1459 days ago
In a privacy-conscious implementation of GTM/GA, those scripts can be loaded from a first-party server controlled by the company, and Google will never see the user's IP address.

There is no real alternative to Google Analytics for most companies because of the Google Ads integration. If you advertise with Google, you need to send them conversion data, which means the GCLID. Without Google Ads, switching would be simple. Most enterprises already pay for other analytics tools.

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autoexec 1459 days ago
> In a privacy-conscious implementation of GTM/GA, those scripts can be loaded from a first-party server controlled by the company,

Thanks! I didn't know that was an option. I haven't noticed sites doing it yet at least, but I hope it catches on even for sites targeting US visitors! It'd be especially nice for government websites using GA.

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denton-scratch 1459 days ago
> Google Analytics 4, its successor, does not log or store IP address at all.

The fact that it receives the IP address at all renders it illegal in Italy, and probably anywhere GDPR is in force. And IP address truncation doesn't get you anywhere; it's Google that does the truncating, so the whole address is actually sent to Goo, by which time it has departed from GDPR jurisdiction.

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