If you’ve received or soon receive a similar letter — don’t worry ;) Vsble is fully GDPR-ready. Learn how you can respond and what you can do to make your site 100% secure.

"In Germany, there are around 18 million websites with a .de domain. Many of them use “Google Fonts.” According to a court ruling from earlier this year, using this Google service without prior user consent may constitute a data privacy violation.

The result: The court ruled that the website operator must stop using the service, provide information, and pay damages.

(Landgericht Munich, decision from Jan 20, 2022, case no. 3 O 17493/20).

Some private individuals are now using this ruling to send out their own “cease-and-desist letters” to numerous businesses — demanding €100 in damages."

(Source: wbs-law.de – You can also download a sample response there, if you feel like replying 😉. The document also explains why these letters are legally unfounded.)"

A certain "Kilian Leonard" or other individuals are currently sending out letters to many website owners. They warn about the use of Google Fonts and offer, for "only" €170, not to "report you to the authorities."

How thoughtful of Kilian.

If you do want to respond to one of these "Kilians", you can request a free sample reply here — but you don’t have to. :)

Yes, Google Fonts require explicit user consent, if the user’s IP address is passed on to Google.
However, this data transfer can’t be reliably proven, nor can any damage. It's also unclear whether IPs are even passed on unmasked. Google provides no clarification on this.

Vsble anonymizes and masks all IP addresses.
There is no verifiable data transfer to Google — meaning no GDPR violation.

Check out our video to see how our GDPR solution works and how you can disable Google Fonts or any other fonts by default, even before explicit consent — if you prefer to.

What you do need is an Impressum (Legal Notice) and a Privacy Policy. You can add these in the footer of your website.

In our support article, you'll find information and helpful links for generating template texts. We also list the tools Vsble uses, so you can include them in the generator, or simply download our pre-written legal text blocks.