Google’s Tracking of Safari Users Could Lead to FTC Investigation - stokesfrighters

Google's alleged circumvention of do-not-lead controls on Apple's Safari browser could lead to big fines from the U.S. Regime Trade Commission if the agency determines Google has violated a seclusion small town the company agreed to in March, around privacy advocates said Friday.

Violations of a settlement with the FTC can lead to fines of $16,000 per violation, per day. It's unclear how many times Google may throw circumvented do-not-track protections on the Safari browser, distributed with iPhones, iPads, some iPods and Macintosh computers.

Google was "incredibly stupid" to slip tracking cookies into Safari, given that the company is under scrutiny by the FTC and privacy advocates, said Justin Brookman, theater director of consumer privacy at the Heart and soul for Democracy and Engineering science. "I'd be very surprised if there was not some type of Federal Trade Commission action."

An FTC spokeswoman said the means was aware of the allegations, but could not comment on the far side that.

On Friday, Stanford University graduate student Jonathan Mayer published information about Google and three other companies defeating Hunting expedition's do-not-track protections.

Google said information technology did not purposely install trailing cookies. "We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled," Rachel Whetstone Google senior vice chairwoman for communications and unexclusive policy," said in a statement. "Information technology's of import to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal entropy."

Google configured a link 'tween its servers and Safari browsers that allowed Google to collect anonymous information around users, Whetstone aforesaid.

 "However, the Campaign web browser contained functionality that then enabled unusual Google publicizing cookies to be mark on the browser," she added. "We didn't anticipate that this would bechance, and we have now started removing these publicizing cookies from Safari browsers."

Even if Google installed trailing cookies inadvertently, that could lead to problems with the FTC, Bookman said. "Technological work-arounds to evade browser privacy settings are unwelcome," He added.

Consumer Guard dog, a privacy advocate that has been critical of Google, called on the FTC to look into the company for dirty and deceptive business practices.

"They bear been lying about how people can protect their privacy in their instruction manual about how to opt out of receiving targeted advertizing," said John Simpson, the group's privacy propose director. "Consumer Guard dog has asked the FTC to bi because this clearly violates Google's consent arrangement with the committal."

The incident also shows the want for the United States Congress to pass do-not-traverse legislating, Simpson added.

Google has shown a history of disregarding privacy concerns, with its Street View cars snooping connected Wi-Fi networks, its sharing personal information along its ill-fated Bombination elite-networking table service, and now this, added Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy group.

"In its rush to pull together more data on users to boost its merchandising revenues, and fight off contender from Facebook, Google has sidelined the concealment implications," he said. "There's a form in Google behavior that reveals a company in hot pursuit of a user's information."

Chester unloved Google's account that it wasn't collecting own data from Safari users. "They know all right that such behavioral targeting cookies are tied to unique individuals and reveal important syntactic category information," he said.

Ulysses S. Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. regime for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail come up to is grant_gross@idg.com.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/468357/googles_tracking_of_safari_users_could_lead_to_ftc_investigation-2.html

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