[LINK] itNews: 'Google cops record fine for Safari bypass'

[Roger Clarke]

[Google's behaviour has been so arrogant that the FTC - an oversight 
agency that I have always characterised as weak and highly 
business-sympathetic - has felt it necessary to fine the company $20 
million.

[But the arrogance remains.  The company successfully avoided 
admitting guilt, and can treat the fine as a (small) cost of going 
about its privacy-abusive business.]

Google cops record fine for Safari bypass
Jasmin Melvin
itNews
Aug 10, 2012 5:14 AM (2 hours ago)
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/311499,google-cops-record-fine-for-safari-bypass.aspx

Google will pay $US22.5 million ($AU21.3 million) to settle charges 
it bypassed user privacy settings in the mobile Safari browser, the 
US Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.

The deal ends an FTC probe into allegations the search giant used 
cookies to bypass the default security settings on the Safari browser 
on iPhones and iPads to monitor users for advertising purposes.

Jonathon Mayer, the Stanford University graduate student who 
discovered Google's special approach to Safari, alleged Google and 
other media companies "intentionally circumvent Safari's privacy 
feature".

Google has said the tracking of Safari users was inadvertent and that 
it collected no personal information such as names, addresses or 
credit card data. But the tracking was done despite assurances Safari 
could be set to protect user privacy.

The company has said the investigation was prompted by a 2009 help 
center web page that predated a change in Apple's cookie-handling 
policy.

The practice was in violation of a 2011 consent decree Google 
negotiated with the FTC over its botched rollouts of the now defunct 
social network Buzz.

Google was not required to admit to any liability as part of the settlement.

While it was the largest penalty the FTC has ever placed on a company 
for violating a Commission order, the fine is a drop in the bucket 
for a company that chalked up revenues of $US12.21 billion in the 
second quarter. But revelations of the cookie use embarrassed the 
search engine company.

"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," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.

Google will also have to disable the tracking cookies that ended up 
on consumers' computers, despite the company's assurances it was not 
placing cookies.

The Safari issue is not Google's first brush with potential privacy violations.

Launched in February 2010 to compete with Twitter, Buzz initially 
used its Gmail customers' email contact lists to create social 
networks of Buzz contacts the rest of the world could see, which led 
to an uproar.

Google quickly changed the settings so that contacts were kept 
private by default. It settled with the FTC on Buzz in March 2011.

It also tightened its privacy policy in the wake of revelations that 
Street View cars, which take panoramic pictures of city streets, 
inadvertently collected data from unsecured wireless networks in more 
than 30 countries.

The FTC has closed its investigation into the issue, which was also 
probed by the governments of Britain, Australia, France, Singapore 
and Switzerland, among others.

The search giant is also the subject of a wide-ranging antitrust 
investigation by the FTC and European regulators over accusations it 
manipulated search results to favour its own products.

Reporting By Jasmin Melvin and Diane Bartz; editing by Gerald E. 
McCormick and Andre Grenon


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University