Sweden's Privacy Watchdog Issues Over $1M in Fines, Urges End to Google Analytics

Sweden's data protection watchdog, IMY, has issued fines totaling over $1.1 million to Swedish telco Tele2 and online retailer CDON for breaching the bloc's privacy rules by exporting European users' data via Google Analytics, citing risks posed by U.S. government surveillance. The regulator found that Google's supplementary measures for protecting European users' data sent to the U.S. were insufficient. Two other companies, Coop and Dagens Industries, were also found to have breached GDPR rules but were not fined. IMY has ordered all four companies to stop using Google Analytics. The fines mark the first penalties following privacy complaints against Google Analytics and Facebook Connect.