Encrypted mail as user id in GA

Question

Is it ok to use an encrypted email with public/private key encryption as User ID?

I understand that an autogenerated ID would be valid as User Id, the problem is that because of the complexity of the organization it would take a long time.

Saludos, Kevin

Answer 1

I have to update this answer, since the paragraph quoted below evidently refers to data imports only.

Googles guidelines on "Best practices to avoid sending Personally Identifiable Information (PII)" say:

You can send Google Analytics an encrypted identifier or custom dimension that is based on PII, as long as you use the proper encryption level. Google has a minimum hashing requirement of SHA256 and strongly recommends the use of a salt, with a minimum of 8 characters.

I have no idea why this would be okay in data collection but not in data imports, but that's what Google says so there.

Old answer

Somewhat surprisingly that's not okay.

You will not upload any data that allows Google to personally identify an individual (such as names, social security numbers, email addresses, or any similar data), or data that permanently identifies a particular device (such as a mobile phone’s unique device identifier if such an identifier cannot be reset), even in hashed form.

While encryption is not the same as hashing I'm pretty sure that a ban on hashing will also apply to encryption (after all hashing is not even supposed to be reversible, so in a way it is "stronger" than encryption).