Is Google reCAPTCHA GDPR compliant?

What does Google reCAPTCHA do?

Google's bot protection. It profiles visitor behaviour to score them and transfers that to Google, so it is not strictly necessary in the ePrivacy sense. Friendly Captcha, hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile are the usual EU-friendly replacements.

Does Google reCAPTCHA need consent?

Yes. Google reCAPTCHA is Bot protection, which is never strictly necessary for a website to function. Under ePrivacy Article 5(3), and its national transpositions, storing or reading anything on the device for that purpose requires consent first, and that consent has to be as easy to refuse as it is to give.

ePrivacy Art. 5(3) · TDDDG § 25 (DE) · TKG 2021 § 165(3) (AT) · GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)

Does Google reCAPTCHA send data outside the EEA?

Yes. Google reCAPTCHA processes data outside the European Economic Area, so you need a transfer mechanism under Chapter V and you have to say so in your privacy policy. In practice this means standard contractual clauses, or a provider certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

GDPR Art. 44 · GDPR Art. 46

How do we detect Google reCAPTCHA?

We load your page in a real browser as a first-time visitor who clicks nothing, then look at what it contacted. Google reCAPTCHA is recognised by requests to recaptcha.net, and we report whether it merely loaded or actually sent data, and whether it set a cookie before any choice was made.