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I am building a simple website and therefore wanted to avoid worrying about GDPR compliance by simply not processing or tracking any user data.

However, when investigating my only third-party service "Font Awesome" I noticed that they track the amount of monthly page views of my page (they even openly display it in my account dashboard) and potentially which icons are used. Note that they claim that their service is GDPR-compliant. References for all statements here.

Is this form of tracking allowed under GDPR without prior consent, as it can not be considered required for the functionality of the site? Furthermore, if this is considered illegal under GDPR, who will be responsible, I (the site owner) or Font Awesome (responsible for the tracking)?

If possible please provide sources for the main statements of your answer.

Thank you.

PS: I know that nothing posted on this site can be treated as legal advice.

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    Lots of people have written online about the Google Fonts case where that CDN was found to be not necessary for the site to work, so it's usage was a GDPR violation. The same logic would apply to Font Awesome. After all, you can self-host the assets, which is not only more private, but typically also faster. Regarding responsibility, the Fashion ID case is helpful: you're responsible for everything on your site, like causing requests to third parties. You're not responsible for what those 3rd parties do with received data. It's possible that FA is compliant, but not your use of FA.
    – amon
    Commented Jan 16 at 15:01

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Is this form of tracking allowed under GDPR without prior consent

No, and the responsible person is you the site owner. You decided to take your customers IP address and give it to FontAwesome, by not hosting this font yourself, on your site, but at a third party.

It doesn't really matter whether it is FontAwesome, or Google fonts. Loading a font from a different source, thereby exposing your customers IP address (personal data) to a third party without your customer's consent, is not compliant.

Court decision for the user of Google fonts by loading them from Google instead of hosting them themselves:

LG München, Urteil vom 20.01.2022, Az. 3 O 17493/20

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  • Thank you for your answer!
    – Ph.lpp
    Commented Jan 16 at 21:10

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