GA4: Privacy as a feature: who’d have thought it?

I never anticipated getting excited over the Admin section of GA. But if more granular controls means more organisations using the data, then sign me up! Here’s a whistle-stop tour of GA4 features that nod very firmly to privacy.

Privacy is…glamorous?

Privacy baked into settings

The most obvious areas for Google to bake privacy into is the set-up and settings of GA4.

One very simple but nice feature that’s been introduced is that Google no longer stores IP addresses from users in the EU. With Universal Analytics, Google uses the IP address to locate users but that was always stored on Google servers, albeit it was never surfaced to us as users. However, with GA4  the IP address is used to identify approximate location data and then discarded. A small but powerful tick in terms of privacy.

When it comes to set-up, you’re also able to actually restrict the data processing of certain events, in order to comply with data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Similar to the above you’re also able to control the use of Google Signals (e.g. the use of Google's device graph to connect a user's site visits together, for remarketing purposes, etc) on a region-by-region basis

The final setting you can play around with focuses on tighter controls on how long data can be stored for by default. GA4 has only two options within the interface - 2 months or 14 months (and definitely something to check in your account!) compared with an option in the previous version of GA to keep data indefinitely.

Don’t take privacy for granted

Not the most eye-catching set of features to shout about but as we know, privacy is an incredibly important topic at the moment. Whilst the subject of Google Analytics legality in several countries has been questioned in recent months, what’s clear is that Google Analytics 4 represents a significant leap forward in respecting user privacy. And that’s only a good thing.