Replacing Google Maps by OSM?

Hi @gerdski,

Thanks for reaching out!

theeventscalendar.com/our-approach-to-gdpr

We are currently working on the subject of GDPR compliance and that includes efforts to help site operators to determine their own obligations in relation to our plugins ??

An audit is still in progress and we will not be able to offer firm guidance on this until that is complete, but to the best of my current knowledge there are no GDPR compliance issues within GigPress (critically, all the data that you as a site operator can add you can also delete, and data from customers will not be solicited automatically).

I think that replacing Google Maps by Open Street Maps could do a lot to improve compliance.

That’s an interesting thought, though I’m unsure why that would relate to GDPR or what the crucial difference between Google Maps and Open Street Maps would be in this situation. Can you expand on this? I want to be sure we fully understand your question.

Hi,

I have managed to replace the Google Map Call in GigPress by an OSM call, this was not very hard. However, it is not update safe.

I believe that Google Maps, embedded into a web site, collects data like IP address and referrer, and it uses cookies. In combination with other embedded Google Services like Google Fonts, Google Translator, Google Calendar, YouTube etc. it is possible to use all this data to create or update user profiles.

No visitor really wants that, and one of the goals of the GDPR is, in my opinion, to stop this kind of big data aggregation.

If you include Google Maps in a web site, you must at least tell your visitors that they are being tracked in your Privacy Policy.

A better choice, in my view, would be to remove Google Maps completely from the website and replace it by OSM…as far as I know they don’t use tracking cookies.

To me, this makes a web site more GDPR compliant.

So maybe you could include a switch in the plugin settings, to choose from either Google Maps, or OpenStreetMaps, or no Maps at all.

Cheers from Gerdski

OK, we’ll consider that for a future update.

No update until the 25. of May?

I’ll have to remove Google Maps then to avoid WebSites becoming illegal…

If you feel that removing Google Maps is a necessary step and have the code in place already, that seems like a good compromise.

We’re still working through the implications of the GDPR rules. We of course want to provide you and other users of our plugins the information you need, but we also need to proceed carefully to avoid mistakes.

What is your opinion on Google Maps (including Google Tracking and Cookies) and the GDPR compliance? Most Webmasters and Website owners here in Germany think it’s necessary to remove Google Maps wherever possible, and they do it in great numbers. Good that they can switch it off in GigPress.

I have now replaced Google Maps with OSM, and it’s working great. Sorry that I cannot wait any longer because I will be on holiday in a few hours ??

Cheers!

Google themselves have stated that, “You can count on the fact that Google is committed to GDPR compliance across Google Cloud services.”

cloud.google.com/security/gdpr

Our own stance in relation to any third party APIs that our plugins integrate with, GigPress and Google Maps being one such example, is expressed in the following doc:

theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/modern-tribe-gdpr

Hey there,

Since this thread has been inactive for a while, I’m going to go ahead and mark it as resolved. Don’t hesitate to create a new thread any time you help again!

Ed ??