At least 12 central government bodies have used a system on their websites that sends users' browsing histories to Google's ad server, The Yomiuri Shimbun has been learned. The main reason behind this is that these bodies use the tech giant's ad analysis software, which violates national security criteria. After The Yomiuri Shimbun pointed out this situation, seven of the 12 stopped transmitting the information.
By the end of February, The Yomiuri Shimbun and the data analytics company DataSign Inc. had examined a total of 35 websites operated by the Cabinet Office, 11 ministries, two agencies and other bodies including the Cabinet Secretariat. Of them, it was learned that the websites of 12 bodies were using a system that automatically connects viewers' terminals to Google's ad server to transmit their terminal information and browsing histories to the server. The data is highly likely to fall under the category of personal information for Google.
This happened because, when respective bodies introduced the free software Google Analytics to analyze site accesses, they turned on an advertising function. They told The Yomiuri Shimbun such things as: "A company to which we outsourced data analysis implemented the function at its discretion," an official at Cabinet Secretariat said, and "We didn't understand the function very well," an official at the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry said.
The function is commonly used by media outlets and other bodies that earn income from advertising. But the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity has uniform criteria for administrative organs that prohibit them from using such functions. "Using the function violates the criteria," an official at the center said.
Google notified The Yomiuri Shimbun that they have a system where users can opt out of the function if they are unwilling to share their browsing histories.
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