German Court Rules Websites Embedding Google Fonts Violates GDPR

A regional court in the German town of Munich has ordered a web page operator to shell out €100 in damages for transferring a user’s private data — i.e., IP handle — to Google by way of the research giant’s Fonts library with out the individual’s consent.

The unauthorized disclosure of the plaintiff’s IP tackle by the unnamed web site to Google constitutes a contravention of the user’s privacy legal rights, the court docket claimed, including the internet site operator could theoretically merge the gathered info with other 3rd-party info to identify the “individuals driving the IP handle.”

The violation quantities to the “plaintiff’s loss of management around a particular facts to Google,” the ruling read through.

✔ Approved From Our Partners

Protect and backup your data using AOMEI Backupper. AOMEI Backupper takes secure and encrypted backups from your Windows, hard drives or partitions. With AOMEI Backupper you will never be worried about loosing your data anymore.

Get AOMEI Backupper with 72% discount from an authorized distrinutor of AOMEI: SerialCart® (Limited Offer).

➤ Activate Your Coupon Code

Google Fonts is a font embedding service library from Google, allowing for developers to insert fonts to their Android apps and web-sites just by referencing a stylesheet. As of January 2022, Google Fonts is a repository for 1,358 font households.

Beneath the European Union’s Normal Info Safety Regulation (GDPR), info factors these types of as IP addresses, promoting IDs, and cookies are counted as particular identifiable information and facts (PII), creating it obligatory for organizations working in the nation to search for users’ explicit authorization ahead of processing these details.

In addition, the court docket pointed out that “Google Fonts can also be utilized by the defendant with no a link to a Google server is established and the IP tackle of the website user is transmitted to Google,” effectively requiring web-sites to host the fonts domestically.

Apart from buying the web page to stop disclosing the IP deal with by embedding the font library, the court docket also urged the company jogging the site to share with the impacted party details about the form of own data that it shops and is being processed.

The determination will come months immediately after the Austrian Data Security Authority (DSB) dominated that the use of Google Analytics by a health and fitness-concentrated web page named NetDoktor violates the GDPR regulation by exporting visitors’ details to Google servers in the U.S., opening the doorway for potential surveillance by the U.S. intelligence expert services.

Located this posting fascinating? Follow THN on Facebook, Twitter  and LinkedIn to examine extra special information we put up.