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Hotlinking Google Fonts leaks your visitors' IP addresses to Google. This bothers some people.

It’s more than just “bothers people”. Some jurisdictions consider this to be leaking PII without consent and will issue fines if you don’t self-host or ask permission. For example:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_f...

Google Fonts has an open issue that is three years old here, with no response from Google:

https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/5537

Also:

https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1495

From the official Google note:

> Also, please note that Google LLC is certified under both the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks and our certifications can be viewed on the Privacy Shield list.

It’s very important to be aware that the Privacy Shield was declared invalid by the European Court of Justice in 2020, so that note from April 17, 2018 is worthless.

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