Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

Consent Mode – Why you should not use it

2 min read

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However by examining the URL it is trivial to see that Google’s ghost hits STILL contain the visitor’s user_id user_id and transaction_id transaction_id (if collected), and the visitors IP address is transmitted to Google servers. Collecting, storing and processing such data when the visitor has explicitly stated no to this, would surely be considered illegal in any jurisdiction. (View Highlight)

Note, this does not mean all data collection is forbidden without an annoying pop-up banner requesting consent. Any data point or cookie that you can reasonably justify as “strictly necessary” for the functioning of your site/app, does not require consent. That is, there is such as thing as benign analytics that does not require consent, but sending data to a “mass aggregator” such as Google, does not count as benign. See my Planet49 article on LinkedIn for further thought on this. (View Highlight)

Therefore to be privacy compliant for laws such as GDPR/ePR, you need to actively block the Google ghost hits (View Highlight)

With only the default settings of consent mode in place, Google will continue to collect data when a visitor has explicitly stated no to tracking. Remarkably, this is quite transparent from Google – see the official documentation. Their rational is to collect “anonymised” data from your non-consenting visitors so that they can model the impact of non-consent. (View Highlight)

But is it?

However by examining the URL it is trivial to see that Google’s ghost hits STILL contain the visitor’s and (if collected), and the visitors IP address is transmitted to Google servers. Collecting, storing and processing such data when the visitor has explicitly stated no to this, would surely be considered illegal in any jurisdiction. (View Highlight)

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