At Google, we are keenly aware of the trust you place in us and our responsibility to protect your privacy. As part of this responsibility, we let you know what information we collect when you use our products and services, why we collect it and how we use it to improve your experience. The Google Privacy Policy describes how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and services, including Google Analytics.

Like many services, Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to track visitor interactions. These cookies are used to store information, such as what time the current visit occurred, whether the visitor has been to the site before, and what site referred the visitor to the web page. Browsers do not share first-party cookies across domains.

Every computer and device connected to the Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet protocol (IP) address. Since these numbers are usually assigned in country-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the country, state, and city from which a computer is connecting to the Internet. Google Analytics collects the IP address of website visitors in order to provide website owners a sense of where in the world their visitors come from. This method is known as IP geolocation.

Google Analytics does not report the actual IP address information to Google Analytics customers. Additionally, using a method known as IP masking, website owners that use Google Analytics have the option to tell Google Analytics to only use a portion of the IP address, rather than the entire IP address, for geolocation. Whether or not website owners use Google Analytics, they have access to IP addresses for visitors to their sites.

Google classifies Google Analytics data as confidential information, governed by Google's privacy policies. Provisions most relevant to Google Analytics include:

• Personal information - Information that personally identifies you, such as your name, email address or billing information, or other data which can be reasonably linked to such information. The Google Analytics Terms of Service, which all Analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits the tracking or collection of this information using Google Analytics or associating personal information with web analytics information.
• No data-sharing without consent - Google Analytics data may not be shared without user consent, except under certain limited circumstances, such as when required by law.
• Ongoing investment in security - Security-dedicated engineering teams at Google guard against external threats to data. Internal access to data (e.g., by employees) is strictly regulated and subject to the Employee Access Controls and Procedures.
• Policy enforcement - Google audits compliance with its own privacy policies.

To provide website visitors more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics, we developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on does not prevent information from being sent to the website itself or to other web analytics services.

Learn more about the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Google Analytics data sharing settings govern whether and how automated processes can access an account's data. Automated processes use the shared data to provide additional information and capabilities to the Google Analytics account.

Data sharing settings may be edited on the Account Settings page.

• Share my Google Analytics data with other Google products only: This option restricts data access to Google services only, such as AdWords and AdSense. Selecting this option makes it possible to, for example, import Google Analytics goals into AdWords.
• Share my Google Analytics data anonymously with Google and others: This option enables access to anonymous benchmarking reports. Google removes any information that might identify the source websites, combines the data with hundreds of other anonymous sites that use Google Analytics in comparable industries, and reports aggregate trends. Shared data is completely anonymous, and can't be tied back to individual accounts.
• Do not share my Google Analytics data: This option excludes data from being included in any automated processes that aren't specifically related to operating and improving Google Analytics or protecting the security and integrity of the data.

Learn more about about Data Sharing Options.

Users own their Google Analytics data. Users may export their data at any time from Google Analytics (using the XML or CSV download options, or via the Google Analytics Data Export API). They may use exported data with other applications/services in conjunction with Google Analytics, or stop using Google Analytics altogether.

Users may delete any profile within a Google Analytics account for which they have administrator access.

As stated above, Google classifies Google Analytics data as confidential information. Employee access controls protect customer data from unauthorized access and we conduct audits to ensure the controls are enforced.

• All account data is confidential and subject to the confidentiality provisions of Google's Privacy Policy.
• Access to customer-level account data may be granted on a strict need-only basis to employees who require the specific access to perform their jobs. Employees requesting access must explain why they need the access, demonstrate familiarity with the access policy and agree to its terms and conditions, and receive approval before they can access the data.
• Customer Service Representatives and support personnel may not access customer-level data without explicit permission from the customer. Permission may be given orally or written in an email or support request ticket.
• When accessing customer data, employees will restrict activity to those reports they need to complete their official duties.
• Employees may not access data using any network-enabled device not owned or approved by Google.

In web-based computing, security of both data and applications is critical. Google dedicates significant resources towards securing applications and data handling to prevent unauthorized access to data.

Data is stored in an encoded format optimized for performance, rather than stored in a traditional file system or database manner. Data is dispersed across a number of physical and logical volumes for redundancy and expedient access, thereby obfuscating it from tampering.

Google applications run in a multi-tenant, distributed environment. Rather than segregating each customer's data onto a single machine or set of machines, data from all Google customers (consumers, business, and even Google's own data) is distributed amongst a shared infrastructure composed of Google's many homogeneous machines and located in Google's data centers.

To minimize service interruption due to hardware failure, natural disaster, or other catastrophe, Google implements a comprehensive disaster recovery program at all of its data centers. This program includes multiple components to eliminate single point of failure, including the following:

• Data replication and backup:To help ensure availability in the event of a disaster, Google Analytics data stored in Google's distributed file system is replicated to separate systems in different data centers.
• Google operates a geographically distributed set of data centers tha tis designed to maintain service continuity in the event of a disaster or other incident in a single region. High-speed connections between the data centers help ensure swift failover. Management of the data centers is also distributed to provide location-independent, around-the-clock coverage, and system administration.

In addition to the redundancy of data and regionally disparate data centers, Google also has a business continuity plan for its headquarters in Mountain View, CA. This plan accounts for major disasters, such as a seismic event or a public health crisis, and it assumes people and services may be unavailable for up to 30 days. This plan is designed to enable continued operations of our services for our customers.

Google's computing clusters are designed with resiliency and redundancy in mind, helping minimize single points of failure and the impact of common equipment failures and environmental risks. Dual circuits, switches, networks, and other necessary devices are utilized to provide redundancy. Facilities infrastructure at the data centers has been designed to be robust, fault tolerant, and concurrently maintainable. In addition, backups are performed at regular intervals and at different levels of storage boundaries to provide backup redundancy, including secure offsite tape backup.