This is how the sites have been reviewed
Ekot visited over 500 websites owned by municipalities, authorities and regions. Through a virtual browser, connected through its own proxy, all traffic that passes between the browser and the rest of the Internet has been collected. We then filtered all calls made to Google, and examined whether it related to visitor data sent to Google through Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools that website owners on the Internet use to collect statistics about people who visit a website.
How do you know if IP anonymization is enabled or not?
Google Analytics has a feature that tells Google that the company must hide the IP address before it can be saved. IP anonymization is enabled if the call contains & aip text or if the site is using the fourth version of the tool. And vice versa if the call does not contain & aip and if the site is not using the fourth version of the tool.
How do you decide whether or not the website promises to remain anonymous?
For every website that used the tool but did not hide the IP address, we investigated whether 1) Google Analytics was mentioned in the website’s cookie policy 2) If the website promised to hide the visitor’s IP identity 3) If the website was the visitor Publicly anonymously and 4) if the website reports that IP addresses are being sent to Google.
If the answer to question 2 or 3 is yes, then Ekot says the policy contains a promise of anonymity to the visitor.
Sasha Granberg
Sven Carlson
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