There is a wider debate that deserves to be had about analytics - not just Google Analytics but about web tracking in general. A debate about what data is collected in the first place and just how "anonymous" that data is. Is it possible for companies to respect user privacy and collect user data that helps inform improvements to their business or website at the same time? How can we answer this question when we don't even know what companies track and record in the first place? Google cetainly aren't telling.
It's interesting that Google does not display the IP address to Google Analytics customers citing privacy concerns, but it does of course capture that data for itself. Put another way, Google believes displaying the IP address to analytics customers would be a privacy concern, yet you could argue that Google capturing that data for itself is a greater privacy concern because, unlike the indiviudal analytics customers, Google can aggregate all the phenomenal amounts of data it captures to build a much more detailed picture of online behaviour across multiple sites.
Google are not collecting this information for nefarious purposes, but no company should be allowed to collect such phenomenal amounts of data about users' online behaviour without scrutiny. For example, consider how little comment is made on the privacy implications of using ChromeOS where your online behaviour is not only captured by Google, it isn't even anonymous.
No other company has its digital fingerprints all over the web like Google. But Google gets an easy pass on matters of privacy and online tracking. Why?
We have a number of sites in the UK for reporting crime which are supposed to be anonymous. The best known is Crimestoppers UK [1] which tells you you can "Contact us anonymously with information about crime". All these sites use Google Analytics and some also add Facebook tracking codes too.
None of these sites point out that Google, Facebook, etc can easily ID you and while you may be anonymous to the site operator you aren't truly anonymous. I've contacted Crimestoppers and the local police to ask about this and got nowhere. The bottom line seems to be that the police and Crimestoppers have absolute unshakable faith in Google and are comfortable outsourcing crime victims' privacy to an American advertising company.
I developed a very similar form for one of these sites. We were requested to and implemented features for safeguarding anonymity, like stripping information from web logs. The organisation insisted on including Google Analytics on the anonymous form submission page; I repeatedly made it clear that this was an awful idea, that this completely defeated anonymity, and that if usage data was required we could collect it in some other way. Unfortunately, I don't think they really care.
Security around this so-called anonymous data was thoroughly lax, and eventually someone is literally going to be murdered as a result of it.
I don't agree about "nefarious purposes". I think the shift of data about customers away from businesses and toward google is a telling sign of intentions: more data for google to sell (pre-packaged in some ad-retargeting deal). In this case, I'd consider google's data collection to be monopolistic-style "nefarious purposes" and anti-competitive.
It's interesting that Google does not display the IP address to Google Analytics customers citing privacy concerns, but it does of course capture that data for itself. Put another way, Google believes displaying the IP address to analytics customers would be a privacy concern, yet you could argue that Google capturing that data for itself is a greater privacy concern because, unlike the indiviudal analytics customers, Google can aggregate all the phenomenal amounts of data it captures to build a much more detailed picture of online behaviour across multiple sites.
Google are not collecting this information for nefarious purposes, but no company should be allowed to collect such phenomenal amounts of data about users' online behaviour without scrutiny. For example, consider how little comment is made on the privacy implications of using ChromeOS where your online behaviour is not only captured by Google, it isn't even anonymous.
No other company has its digital fingerprints all over the web like Google. But Google gets an easy pass on matters of privacy and online tracking. Why?