The FTC has slapped Google with a record-breaking $22.5 million fine for secretly tracking those who use Apple’s Safari browser. Google claims that they did so “inadvertently,” and that the breach stemmed from a 2010 Safari upgrade that slipped past their radar. Regardless, Google was able to override security safeguards and clandestinely track millions of Safari users for two years.
“The FTC opened its investigation five months ago after a researcher at Stanford University published a study revealing that Google Inc. had overridden Safari safeguards that are supposed to prevent outside parties from monitoring Web surfing activity without a user’s permission,” explains USA Today.
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The tracking occurs through snippets of the digital “cookies” that help Internet advertisers target their pitches based on an analysis of the interests implied by a person’s Web surfing activity. Google immediately withdrew its intrusive technology from Safari after the manipulation was reported.
But the circumvention of Apple’s built-in settings appeared to contradict a statement in Google’s online help center assuring users of Safari on personal computers, iPhones and iPad that the browser’s built-in settings already protected their online activities from being tracked by Google.
Basically, Google explicitly assured Safari users that the browser was totally safe and that the company couldn’t and wouldn’t track their online activity. Meanwhile, Google totally tracked all of their online activities. Some industry groups have sided with Google, saying that it’s entirely possible that it was one huge data-grubbing mistake. Which is kind of amazing, even if true: if a single corporation forgets or chooses to forget to flip a switch, it can end up surveilling millions of hapless people’s online activity.
And Google knows this. Which is why it’s rushing to reach a massive settlement while stirring up as little fanfare as possible; to Google, $22.5 million is well worth making this whole Big Brother-y blunder go away.
It’s not the first time either: In April, Google paid $25,000 after the Federal Communications Commission determined the company had “deliberately impeded and delayed” an investigation into how the company’s Google Street View cars collected information, including user data it captured from open wifi signals. Last year, Google settled another suit by the FTC over privacy complaints about the now dead Google Buzz social network. Google paid a fine, agreed to adopt a privacy program, and submit to an independent audit of its privacy policies every other year for the next two decades. Over in Europe, the company faces a whole slew of challenges over privacy; the French Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertes, or CNIL, recently added the Safari circumvention technique to its existing pan-European investigation into Google’s privacy-policy changes.
Google’s brand hinges on all of us believing that it abides by its now defunct motto and does no evil. Google needs us to believe that it’s not only safe for us to hand over our data, but that it’s actively doing good and world-changing things with it when we do. Hence its recent campaign to combat workplace discrimination of gays and lesbians, and its myriad green endeavors and socially-conscious investments. In response to its privacy troubles, Google released a giant new privacy policy along with a set of tools that will let you, for instance, blur your house on Street View and opt out of web personalization.
As usual for these settlements, Google will not acknowledge any wrongdoing here. We need our Google to be a force for good, a force for connectivity and convenience—we can’t have our most important information-gathering tool exposed as an actual corporation capable of malfeasance and shady privacy-violating tracking tactics. Then people might actually start pulling their heads out of the cloud and wondering what the hell, precisely, is actually in there.
