Sunday 27 February 2011

Overview of Main Posts

This post gives an overview of the most important SDLC related posts in this blog.

  • SDLC Quick Reference  is a a quick reference checklist of security related items you should consider addressing during the development lifecycle of your web or online project. This is the main article.





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    Sunday 13 February 2011

    Is Google Analytics illegal in Germany?




    Update May 25th 2012


    It looks like it's OK again  to use Google Analytics in Germany 
       
    Today I stopped using Google Analytics (GA) on this blog. The reason is that the German Data Protection Authorities have recently said that usage of GA is illegal. They are of the opinion that the way GA uses IP addresses breaches their laws.  I know that some readers of this blog come from Germany. How do I know? Google Analytics.


    This blog also uses StatCounter to analyse visitor traffic. StatCounter is based in the EU - Ireland. So that should be OK - at least in Europe. Anyway,  I prefer StatCounter so GA is no great loss.


    The irony is that this blog is hosted on Google Blogger which is based in the US. This should be OK because Google is signed up to the Safe Harbor framework. This roughly means that it is acceptable to store personal information of EU citizens on Google infrastructure.

    An added complication is that Google Blogger has a feature called Stats, which also offers visitor tracking functionality. This is separate to GA, so hopefully it will not be a problem. It is all a bit mind boggling!

    So should you remove Google Analytics from your website?


    Links:

    PS:  I have just noticed that the Information Commissioner's website in the UK uses Google Analytics. So maybe he shouldn't visit Germany anytime soon.

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