Weill, this only "works" for you if you trust google. Given multiple security incidents in the past I am certainly not one of those people.

What security incidents?

Of all tech companies I'd feel most secure with Google being the stewards of my data.

Snowden. They were leaking a lot of data to the NSA and they didn't even know.

Of course, they upped their game since then, but their sheer size will always make them an interesting target and they have to fail only once.

Thank you. I am purposely avoiding convo to be channeled into discussion of this or that incident - those who want to dig into the matter they can find plenty and draw their own conclusions.

If google makes you feel more secure that doesn't mean it's secure. Feeling secure perhaps works for you but if we would assess how they deal with our data they would be quite far from pool of companies we can trust with data.

And that's only based on what we know currently from security incidents.

I have worked for a few years at Google and have a decent insight into all the processes that go into keeping user data secure. It's perfectly fine to have your reservations but so far as I am concerned, I sleep well.

I don't share the same confidence for all my data that is floating around carelessly in some government spreadsheet somewhere, though.

What security incidents?

IIRC you can thank Mozilla for that setting!

The fact that that does not default to 'off' is quite telling.

There are multiple things you can do with GA of course, like IP anonymization, setting a smaller expiration date for that cookie, etc, however trust in Google Analytics is low and that won't change.

Also a lot of websites, especially personal ones, are in violation of ePrivacy. You may not need GDPR consent for analytics, qualifying for a legitimate interest, but you still need a cookie banner when dropping cookies for analytics.

The market is clear about it, analytics have to be first party and privacy preserving.