[governance] Google to pay record $22.5m fine to FTC over Safari tracking

[Riaz K Tayob]

  Google to pay record $22.5m fine to FTC over Safari tracking

Internet giant admits it tracked iPhone, iPad and Mac users by 
circumventing the privacy protections on Safari web browsers

  *
    Charles Arthur <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charlesarthur>
  * guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Thursday 9 August 2012
    18.02 BST
  * Jump to comments (...)
    <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/09/google-record-fine-ftc-safari#start-of-comments>


Google at the Moscone Center in San Francisco
Google at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Photograph: Kimihiro 
Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images

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 Apple 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/apple>'s iPhone 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/iphone>, iPad 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ipad> and Mac computers by 
circumventing the privacy <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/privacy> 
protections on the Safari web browser for "several months" at the end of 
2011 and into 2012.

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.

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.

Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the FTC, in a statement 
<http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/08/google.shtm>: "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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Google has not admitted wrongdoing. But the fine is yet another in a 
growing list for Google, which fell foul of the Federal Communications 
Commission (FCC) earlier this year 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/16/google-fined-fcc-street-view> 
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.

The largest payment remains the $500m that it paid to settle a federal 
case in August 2011 after illegally advertising Canadian-sourced 
pharmaceuticals to US users 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/24/google-settles-us-drug-advertising-case>. 
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.

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."

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.

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.

"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."

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