Google Fonts, GDPR and Your Website
In January of 2022 a Munich court ruled that using Google fonts on a website violated GDPR privacy policy rules. This has real implications for your website, even if you’re not based in the EU.
In January 2022 a Munich court ruled that since Google fonts pass through a server in the US the violate a users privacy. From the eprivacy blog:
“It has long been recognised that dynamic IP addresses also constitute personal data in the sense of the GDPR. According to the Munich Regional Court, the Google Fonts service transfers the user’s IP address to Google’s parent company in the United States. However, Google does not meet the GDPR requirements for such a data transfer. The result: The data transfer to the United States violates EU privacy law.”
If you continue to read the article you’ll see that this law is somewhat controversial. It will probably continue to wind its way through courts in the EU.
The immediate problem, however, is that literally millions of sites in the EU use Google fonts on their websites.
Squarespace continues to make them available in their standard font panel, as does Wix. I’m sure other hosted website provdiers do as well.
So far there has been shocking little guidance for web design service professionals. Not a peep from Squarespace.
As my husband said, when there isn’t clarity on an issue, the guidance from the legal team at his company is not to say anything about it. This is a method of avoiding unintentional liability.
So what does this mean for you, Jane website owner?
Maybe nothing, but if you want to be on the safe side you should first check if your site is using Google fonts. You can check whether or not a font is a Google font here.
You can also use this German privacy company’s Google font checker to plop in your URL and see if your site uses Google fonts and is or isn’t ‘safe’.
If your site does use Google fonts, here are three things you can do to protect yourself.
Host Google fonts locally.
You can download the font file free from Google and upload it to your website. Here are instructions on how to do that using Squarespace and Wordpress.
Switch to System fonts.
System fonts are the (boring!) fonts that we all know like Verdana, Times New Roman and Georgia. Here is a handy list of system fonts. If you use Squarespace, just change the font settings to any of the fonts listed here.
Try Adobe fonts.
This is a grey area. - I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice! - but I did do some research and couldn’t get a conclusive answer, so it may be okay. Here’s a list of Adobe fonts and Adobe fonts available on Squarespace. This post is a little old. There are actually now around 1000 Adobe Typekit fonts available in Squarespace. If you want to view what fonts Adobe Typekit has on offer you can check here, then search the font settings in Squarespace to see if it’s available for you to use on your website.
A special note to website owners in Germany and Austria.
If you’re in Germany, Austria or Switzerland you may want to be a bit more vigilant about this. Why? Because of this: Warnung: Abmahnwelle wegen Google Fonts (use the language switcher at the top right of the website to read this translated into English)
There are shady firms that have bots scouring the internet looking for websites using Google fonts.
They will send you a notification that you have violated their clients privacy (someone who has simply visited your site) and that you owe them 100€. On top of that, you’ll owe some legal fees to the tune of around 300€.
Shady and unethical as this practice is, it has legal standing.
You may attempt to fight it, but that will just take you more money and time, so the idea is that you’ll just pay the ‘fine’ to make it go away. Better to be safe than sorry!