Most WordPress themes load Google Fonts the default way: a <link> tag pointing at fonts.googleapis.com, which the visitor's browser fetches directly from Google's servers. That request necessarily sends the visitor's IP address to Google — and under GDPR, an IP address is personal data. European courts have found that transmitting it to a third party without consent, just to render a webfont, is a legal exposure site operators didn't realize they'd taken on. This isn't a hypothetical risk category — site operators in the EU have actually been fined over exactly this.

Why this catches affiliate site owners specifically

Affiliate sites lean heavily on free and low-cost themes, many of which load Google Fonts the default remote way without the owner ever making an explicit choice about it — it's just how the theme ships. If you have any EU traffic (and most niches do, even unintentionally), that default is a compliance gap you inherited from your theme, not something you decided.

The fix: self-host the fonts

The fix is straightforward and doesn't require dropping the fonts you like — it means downloading the font files and serving them from your own domain instead of Google's, so no third-party request ever fires. Several plugins automate this (searching for "self-host Google Fonts" surfaces current options), or a theme can simply ship the font files bundled locally from the start, which removes the issue entirely rather than patching it after the fact.

What to check on your current site

  • Open your homepage's page source and search for fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com — if either appears, you're loading fonts remotely.
  • Check your theme's documentation for whether it bundles fonts locally by default or relies on the Google Fonts API.
  • If you're using a page builder or third-party plugin for typography, check it separately — themes and plugins both commonly pull fonts remotely, independent of each other.

How Pinery Theme handles this

Pinery Theme bundles its two typefaces (Jost and Cormorant Garamond) locally by default — the theme makes zero requests to Google Fonts or any other third party for typography, out of the box, with nothing to configure.