For many of the examples described in the article, it is the site (not Google or Facebook) that left the email address in the URL. That is bad coding practice.

For many of the examples described in the article, it is the site (not Google or Facebook) that left the email address in the URL. That is bad coding practice. Just so we are clear, it isn’t the “evil advertising companies did this”. Now asking Google to randomly search all unwanted referral URLs received for a customer specific pattern and delete what may look like an email address seems unfair. Google in no position to use or recognize that data as email. If they tried that, it would be brittle and unmanageable. One could argue Advertising shouldn’t exist or that Google should not store anything. But the GDPR argument is BS, although admittedly legal. It is like throwing a small rock in to the neighbors yard and asking them to retrieve it for you.