I expect it's because the firms wanted to use these values in Google Analytics to do analysis of their own customers.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10075209?hl=en

Right. Someone at Intuit (or wherever) wanted to know "what pages or functions do people with 1 dependent use the most".

This query seems logical and an easy thing to ask for without realizing the implications. I would bet this type of thing happens with LOTS of sites that collect any sort of personal data.

Obviously for us here, blocking analytic platforms through an adblock tool is a smart thing to do, exactly for this reason. But obviously that doesn't scale to the masses.

Because it would be impossible for Google to do any kind of serious server side analysis of the data, which is why these companies use analytics, if Google don't have the data unencrypted.

I worked on apps where the data collected was completely empty of user-identifying information. Management seemed content with merely logging clicks from within the UI, seeing how (and how many) people used the app.

Sadly I think there is a trend in our industry to gather everything, decide what you actually want/need later.

I think Google (and related) are to blame for enabling this kind of "data hoovering". Giving the customer what they want at the expense of us the users is getting kinda evil.

The terms of service of Google Analytics specifically prohibit storing PII in it. "You will not and will not assist or permit any third party to pass information, hashed or otherwise, to Google that Google could use or recognize as personally identifiable information"

I think you can say it's "anonymous" data in that it doesn't have name/phone/email but still be relatively fingerprint-able given additional analytics data.

Sounds like your info is still tracking.

And that level of insight only works for small companies - at a certain point you want to combine analytics from your UI with things like “is this a high value customer” or “did this customer stop using the app after experiencing this frustrating UX”

I'm still not convinced how this is "bad" per se. Yet we're all here discussing this as if it's already decided that this data shouldn't be shared and I'm sitting here thinking "Wtf? Who asked me?". Ok, so the Tax firm I gave my personal info to put it on Google, okay. Will google see it? Sure. Is it on some DB on google? Sure.

Do I care? No.

We're watching the world burn right now with more pressing issues, and this whole thing seems so ridiculously academic and contrived.

Same here, this type of outrage bait doesn’t work on me either. Some income info on me is in Intuit’s database somewhere, it hypothetically maybe being in a database at Meta does not affect me at all, other than I might get ads for more luxury goods. I don’t care, I also click “allow” instead of “Ask App Not To Track” in every iOS pop-up scare message.

> We're watching the world burn right now with more pressing issues

The stampede of technology on our privacy, on our daily lives is, I think, one of those fires burning right now.

Isn't having access to the data the whole point of this?

Because the whole point of Google Analytics is because Google wants the data. Obviously the platform here is just as much at fault as the customer using it inappropriately.

There is no way that google has interest in the effort it would take to try to interpret the custom data that websites insert into custom analytics dimensions in a meaningful way. Their algorithms may track trends for them, but they are not aware of what they actually mean in a semantic way. I doubt that it us useful for them to learn anything from that data that is scoped outside the single account.

People are so confused about this. They underestimate the cost and effort that would be needed to just grovel around in GA logs and infer things, nevermind the fact that Google promises not to do it. Then the same commenters overestimate the expected value of successfully doing it, handwaving about how valuable it would be when in reality there is not a market for such data. Finally, they underestimate the risk it would pose to the adsense business, which prints more money than Jerome Powell, and the risk averse culture of Google who would not put that business in jeopardy for anything that pays less than a billion dollars per hour.