<div> 22.5m USD is somewhere between 2 and 3 hours of Google revenue.</div><div><br></div><div>just sayin</div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Riaz K Tayob <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:riaz.tayob@gmail.com" target="_blank">riaz.tayob@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<h1>Google to pay record $22.5m fine to FTC over
Safari tracking</h1>
<p>Internet giant admits it tracked iPhone,
iPad and Mac users by circumventing the privacy protections on
Safari web browsers</p>
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<div> <a rel="author" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur" target="_blank">
Charles Arthur</a> </div>
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<li> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/" target="_blank">guardian.co.uk</a>,
<u></u>Thursday 9
August 2012 18.02 BST<u></u> </li>
<li> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/09/google-record-fine-ftc-safari#start-of-comments" target="_blank"><span>Jump
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<div> <img src="cid:part4.01030709.01010707@gmail.com" alt="Google at
the Moscone Center in San Francisco" height="276" width="460">
<div>Google at the Moscone Center in San
Francisco. Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images</div>
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<p>Google is to pay a record $22.5m fine to the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) in the US after admitting that it tracked
users of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/apple" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Apple" target="_blank">Apple</a>'s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/iphone" title="More from guardian.co.uk on iPhone" target="_blank">iPhone</a>, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ipad" title="More from guardian.co.uk on iPad" target="_blank">iPad</a> and Mac
computers by circumventing the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/privacy" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on Privacy" target="_blank">privacy</a> protections on
the Safari web browser for "several months" at the end of
2011 and into 2012.</p>
<p>The fine is the largest ever paid by a single company to
the FTC, which imposed a 20-year privacy order on Google in
March 2010 following concerns around the launch of its
ill-fated Buzz social network.</p>
<p>In the latest case, the FTC's commissioners ruled by a 4-1
majority that Google had breached that order, which demanded
that it should not mislead consumers about its privacy
practices.</p>
<p>Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the FTC, in a <a href="http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/08/google.shtm" target="_blank">statement</a>:
"The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear
message to all companies under an FTC privacy order. No
matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC
orders against them and keep their privacy promises to
consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it
would have cost to comply in the first place."</p>
<p>The intrusion would have affected millions of users of
Apple devices, which web statistics suggest are used for
substantial amounts of mobile browsing in western countries
particularly.</p>
<p>The FTC began investigating the case six months ago after
Jonathan Mayer, a researcher at Stanford University – once
attended by Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin –
discovered that Google's DoubleClick advertising network was
overriding safeguards built into the Safari browser that
should have prevented cookies being used to track peoples'
movements around the web.</p>
<p>Cookies can be used as unique identifiers of a user, so
that if someone goes from one site to an unrelated one that
also uses DoubleClick, the cookie will work as an identifier
and mean that the adverts on that site, and their activity
there, will be logged and tailored to them.</p>
<p>Google's circumvention of the protection – a system that it
protested at the time was also used by other companies –
apparently contradicted the advice in its online Help
Center, which at that time told Safari users they did not
need to do anything to prevent Google monitoring their
actions, because the browser's default settings would block
the cookies.</p>
<p>The previous largest FTC fine, of almost $19m, was imposed
on a US telemarketer accused of duping people into thinking
they were making donations to charities. </p>
<p>Google has not admitted wrongdoing. But the fine is yet
another in a growing list for Google, which <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/16/google-fined-fcc-street-view" target="_blank">fell
foul of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
earlier this year</a> over its collection of Wi-Fi data
from home and business networks via its Street View cars in
2008. The FCC fined it $50,000 for failing to cooperate with
its investigation.</p>
<p>The largest payment remains the $500m that it paid to
settle a federal case in August 2011 <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/24/google-settles-us-drug-advertising-case" target="_blank">after
illegally advertising Canadian-sourced pharmaceuticals to
US users</a>. The adverts appeared after being bought by
vendors trying to sell pills to US users, who bought AdWords
adverts alongside search results. The company escaped
prosecution after settling.</p>
<p>In a statement, Google said: "We set the highest standards
of privacy and security for our users. The FTC is focused on
a 2009 help center page published more than two years before
our consent decree, and a year before Apple changed its
cookie-handling policy. We have now changed that page and
taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no
personal information, from Apple's browsers."</p>
<p>The company is also under investigation in Europe and the
US over the question of whether it has used its dominant
position in search to push its other products, such as its
shopping, video and maps products, ahead of rivals' which
would have an equal claim to high ranking in search results.</p>
<p>The pressure group Big Brother Watch welcomed the ruling.
It said in a statement: "It is a very dangerous precedent
for companies to deliberately circumvent privacy protection
and so we welcome this ruling as an important milestone in
returning to consumers true control over their personal
information.</p>
<p>"As we have often warned, where businesses rely on personal
information to offer better targeted advertisements there
will be inherent tension between respecting consumer privacy
and pursuing profit."</p>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>Cheers,<br><br>McTim<br>"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel<br>
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