38
submitted 2 days ago by trilobite@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Hi, my employer is sponsoring an academic research on parenting and flexible working. A lot of sensitive questions are asked and the university researcher has circulated these questions on Google Forms to all employees. I am really anti-Google when it comes to privacy (got rid of every Google link years ago and currently use GOS, etc.) so I raised this concern with the HR team. They were sympathetic with my view and have encouraged me to send my view to the university. However, I don't want to go down the rant, and want to provide constructive feedback. So, first thought I would to consult with privacy focused members of this list. Here are my questions:

a) are there independent research papers out there that demonstrate (rather than speculate) that Google Forms is not fully respecting privacy and is not fully GDPR compliant?

b) are there more robust, privacy and GDPR compliant alternatives I could recommend? I've done quick searches on the web and alternatives like JotForm and AidaForm seem to be more privaci and GDPR focused. Anyone used these before?

Am I being too anal about this ...?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So this is pretty good.

https://measuredcollective.com/is-google-forms-gdpr-compliant/

It's a list of things you need to do in order to make the use of Google forms gdpr compliant.

One thing they don't touch on is the use of personal accounts to collect data. People tend to use Google forms because it's easy to set up using their personal account, but that essentially removes any company oversight from the collection and data processing. This makes it much harder to satisfy the data controller requirements.

Of course if it's an external contractor gathering the data and processing it independently, your company is likely to dismiss all this as not their problem.

If it's real academic research it will have had to go through ethics approval, and this should include data handling, and gdpr compliance.

this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
38 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

48829 readers
276 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS