Website fined by German court for leaking visitor's IP address via Google Fonts
- Reference: 1643661644
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_fonts_gdpr/
- Source link:
The [1]decision , by Landgericht München's third civil chamber in Munich, found that the website, by including Google-Fonts-hosted font on its pages, passed the unidentified plaintiff's IP address to Google without authorization and without a legitimate reason for doing so. And that violates Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
That is to say, when the plaintiff visited the website, the page made the user's browser fetch a font from Google Fonts to use for some text, and this disclosed the netizen's IP address to the US internet giant. This kind of hot-linking is normal with Google Fonts; the issue here is that the visitor apparently didn't give permission for their IP address to be shared. The website could have avoided this drama by self-hosting the font, if possible.
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"The unauthorized disclosure of the plaintiff's dynamic IP address by the defendant to Google constitutes a violation of the general right of personality in the form of the right to informational self-determination according to [3]§ 823 Para. 1 BGB ," the ruling stated, as algorithmically translated. "The right to informational self-determination includes the right of the individual to disclose and determine the use of their personal data."
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The decision says IP addresses represent personal data because it's theoretically possible to identify the person associated with an IP address, and that it's irrelevant whether the website or Google has actually done so.
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Google Fonts' typeface picker ... With some sample text of our own in light of this case
"The defendant violated the plaintiff's right to informational self-determination by forwarding the dynamic IP address to Google when the plaintiff accessed the defendant's website," the ruling says.
The ruling directs the website to stop providing IP addresses to Google and threatens the site operator with a fine of €250,000 for each violation, or up to six months in prison, for continued improper use of Google Fonts.
Google Fonts is widely deployed – the Google Fonts API is used by [7]about 50m websites . The API allows websites to style text with Google Fonts stored on remote servers – Google's or a CDN's – that get fetched as the page loads. Google Fonts can be self-hosted to avoid running afoul of EU rules and the ruling explicitly cites this possibility to assert that relying on Google-hosted Google Fonts is not defensible under the law.
[8]Machine needs more Learning: Google Drive dings single-character files for copyright infringement
[9]UK data watchdog slaps Ministry of Justice with Enforcement Notice for breaking GDPR law
[10]Lawmakers propose TLDR Act because no one reads Terms of Service agreements
[11]Austrian watchdog rules German company's use of Google Analytics breached GDPR by sending data to US
The German court ruling echoes two other recent decisions, one earlier in January by Austria's data protection authority that found [12]the use of Google Analytics violated the law, and one in December last year when a different German court [13]found that a Danish consent manager's CookieBot program shared European IP addresses with US-based Akamai in violation of EU data laws.
These data privacy judgments complicate how websites and applications can integrate remotely hosted content or services by requiring a legitimate purpose for doing so if personal data gets transferred or lawful consent.
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They reflect the consequences of the EU Court of Justice's 2020 decision to strike down the Privacy Shield data protection arrangements that had previously allowed US companies to exchange data with European partners under "Standard Contract Clauses." That ruling is known as Schrems II because it originated with Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems 2011 [15]complaint against Facebook in Ireland.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ®
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[1] https://rewis.io/s/u/zH2/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YfhqGhXK7Cl0Kg5VHjdGQwAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://rewis.io/gesetze/bgb/p/bgb-823/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YfhqGhXK7Cl0Kg5VHjdGQwAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YfhqGhXK7Cl0Kg5VHjdGQwAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/01/31/google_fonts_screenshot.jpg
[7] https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Google-Font-API
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/25/google_drive_copyright_infringement/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/19/ico_slaps_ministry_of_justice/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/14/tldr_act_terms/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/13/google_analytics_gdpr/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/13/google_analytics_gdpr/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/08/germany_cookie_service/
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/legal&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YfhqGhXK7Cl0Kg5VHjdGQwAAAEE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/10/irish_regulator_feels_heat_over_facebook_schrems_case/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I am hardly surprised
Modern website design is utter, utter shite. Insane amounts of bloat and garbage. Just insane.
Re: I am hardly surprised
"Modern website design is utter, utter shite. Insane amounts of bloat and garbage. Just insane."
It's not even that good, IMO.
Re: I am hardly surprised
Take a look at IBM's very own weather.com sometime. What a clusterfuck. I counted 7 layers of redirection once. For a fucking local weather report. This is progress?
The equestrian websites, designed to keep teenage girls happily occupied, clicking away, dreaming of getting a full time paying job playing with horses are worse.
In fairness, the way that websites particularly e-commerce websites are enormously wasteful on bandwidth and the sheer breadth of internet-wide resources that they require. So much website flab.
There are rarely situations where a website needs to use a "specific" font and could rely on the ones that are guaranteed to be supported by the browser instead.
Fine them all, every single one
Finally!
The hot linking of websites to third parties is an absolute pain. Even EU government sites have embedded stuff that leak data to non-EU hosters. Unfortunate that the penalty was so small. The website does not give you a choice and that is the problem. Therefore, correct decision.
CDNs are not necessary almost all of the time and are lazy programmer/designer problems. And, some (like google and other advert slingers) are real data-leak catchers. Even when some now say not to use the data... wait until management changes and be utterly unsurprised about the change of heart. And then there are those CDNs, who have no (clear) policy published.
Maybe this fine will start a trend.
Only one site?
I cannot believe only one site has done this - why pick on that one? When are the other fines/lawsuits?
Off to check I'm not doing the same thing --->
Re: Only one site?
Well, you did comment in this forum and that means you may have sent (*) info to "doubleclick.net" and "googletagmanager.com". Both domains are present on this page and are directly or script-activated.
I suggest you use your coat to slap El Reg for €100 for embedding and "forcing" you to send data the third party way.
(*) install an adblocker, NoScript and Privacy Badger. Then use a bit of time to block anything remotely dangerous for your privacy. Maybe add Greasemonkey to mold your own site alterations.
"The website could have avoided this drama by self-hosting the font, if possible."
The user could have avoided the drama by telling the web site to fuck off, I have plenty of perfectly good fonts locally.
I am hardly surprised
So many web sites these days include heaps of javascript, trackers, adverts, etc, which are hosted elsewhere. All of these collect information. One of the worst web sites I have found for this is W3 Schools. I understand that web sites want to track readers or viewers or participants. I understand the 'need' for adverts for otherwise free web sites in quite a few (most?) cases. But just how many of these things does a single web site need? Why does a web site need multiple traffic analysis scripts? Before anyone answers, I already know the answer. My question is based on actual 'need' not 'sometimes it is better'.
The mantra 'be careful where you browse to' has become meaningless, when apparently 'safe' web sites are full of information gathering code hosted on sites that I have never directly visited.
The tentacles of Google are everywhere, and it would be extremely naive to think or suggest that all this information is not collated. We probably all have a Google ID somewhere.