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

McTim dogwallah at gmail.com
Thu Aug 9 16:03:15 EDT 2012 

 22.5m USD is somewhere between 2 and 3 hours of Google revenue.

just sayin


On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:

>   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>
>
>  [image: 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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-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route
indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
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