German Court Fines Website Owner for Violating the GDPR by Using Google-Hosted Fonts – WP Tavern

In late January, a Munich regional court docket ruled {that a} plaintiff was entitled to injunctive reduction and damages of 100 € from an undisclosed web site proprietor for passing on the customer’s IP handle to Google by using Google Fonts.

Since it’s potential to make use of the fonts with out connecting to Google, the court docket deemed this a violation of Europe’s GDPR (Common Knowledge Safety Regulation) as a result of Google Fonts exposes the customer’s IP handle:

The defendant violated the plaintiff’s proper to informational self-determination by forwarding the dynamic IP handle to Google when the plaintiff accessed the defendant’s web site.7

The automated transmission of the IP handle by the defendant to Google was an inadmissible encroachment on the plaintiff’s common persona rights underneath information safety legislation, for the reason that plaintiff on this encroachment was undisputedly not in accordance with Section 13 (2) TMG previous model, Artwork. 6 (1) a ) GDPR has consented.

Google Fonts FAQ discloses the information assortment underneath a bit about consumer privateness and states that it caches responses to attenuate requests and serve the fonts quicker. It doesn’t specify precisely what information is collected however appears to indicate that the knowledge it collects is important to serve the fonts:

The Google Fonts API is designed to restrict the gathering, storage, and use of end-user information to solely what is required to serve fonts effectively.

The German court docket’s ruling threatens a superb of €250,000.00 for every case of infringement or, alternatively, six months imprisonment, if the location proprietor doesn’t comply and continues to supply Google with IP addresses by their use of Google Fonts.

Greater than 50 million web sites use the Google Fonts API. Many website house owners could not even know they’re utilizing them.

In consideration of those that could also be topic to European courts, WordPress plugins and themes that use Google Fonts ought to provide a user-friendly choice to self-host the fonts. If you wish to proceed utilizing Google Fonts in a extra privateness respecting means, there are lots of tutorials for self-hosting the fonts as a substitute.