25 EU govt sites allow Google to harvest data

Personal data that digital advertising technology companies are harvesting from visitors to European Union government sites is in apparent violation of EU data protection law, a study has found.

The study, by Danish browser-analysis company Cookiebot, found that EU governments are allowing more than 100 advertising companies, including Google and Facebook, to track citizens across sensitive public-sector websites, contradicting the EU's own data rules.

Industry experts said the data gathered could be combined with data from other sources to draw detailed profiles of each unique user, which could in turn be sold to data brokers.