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UK Apple Users Sue Google Over Safari Tracking
Dupple writes "After settling with the FTC, Google is under pressure again regarding user privacy. From the BBC: 'A group of Apple's Safari web browser users has launched a campaign against Google over privacy concerns. They claim that Google bypassed Safari's security settings to install cookies which tracked their movements on the internet. Between summer 2011 and spring 2012 they were assured by Google this was not the case, and believed Safari's settings to be secure. Judith Vidal-Hall, former editor of Index On Censorship magazine, is the first person in the UK to begin legal action. 'Google claims it does not collect personal data but doesn't say who decides what information is "personal,"' she said. 'Whether something is private or not should be up to the internet surfer, not Google. We are best placed to decide, not them.'"
Have you seen those small "Share" and "Like" buttons all over the web?
Thats right, Facebook, Google, and others, see every time a browser downloads those buttons and which URL it was loaded from. It the user happens to be logged on to their service, they also see the user's identity.
In otherwords, Facebook, Google can track almost every user and page load on the web!
Maybe Google should start charging us for their services that we get for free... They have to make their money from something, if you don't like it don't use it. Also, anyone who honestly believes that a toggle in their browser is going to prevent them from being tracked on the open internet needs an education on how things really work in the real digital world.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
Apple fanboi nerd rage is funny
i find it mildly amusing that Apple product users are suing google over something related to tracking.
Much as I can agree with the sentiment, we cannot allow every single consumer out there to dictate what constitutes privacy data. Perhaps google should publish what it deems as privacy information, and then allow the consumer to decide to play along or not.
"Both of Apple's Safari web browser users..."
FTFY
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Much as I can agree with the sentiment, we cannot allow every single consumer out there to dictate what constitutes privacy data. Perhaps google should publish what it deems as privacy information, and then allow the consumer to decide to play along or not.
What an excellent Idea. I wonder why Google Never Thought About That.
I find Google far more forthcoming than most companies, and offering a much finer grained level of control.
I would also wager, that Judith Vidal-Hall has a facebook page, a Linkedin page. As far as I'm concerned, anyone signing up for either of those two services has abdicated all semblance of Privacy. Living in a country with CCTV cameras on every street corner, and a government hell bent on capturing every keystroke on your computer forever, how can she object if Google complies with her country's laws?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It is of course perfectly coincidental that the lawyer firm involved is the same one who previously acted for Microsoft in a case against unlicensed X-Box accessories.
I mean ultimately its Safari's problem that Google could find a way to circumvent their privacy settings and write cookies to their user profile. If Safari was written properly then no website should be able to access private information or write to profile.
What is at fault here is the users thought Safari was secure, but Google found a way around the security. Its Safari's issue, period.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I read that line and thought... great. Someone out there is going to think that their screen height is private and break every website that uses scroll effects. That's not a major loss, but what if they decided that the browser is private? People can't be allowed to determine everything that's private... can they?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Yes if only there was some sort of policy regarding privacy that sites like Google would make public... Something that was easy to find, perhaps right on the bottom of every page. Something that said something like Privacy & Terms that you could simply click on to get information.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I would also wager, that Judith Vidal-Hall has a facebook page, a Linkedin page. As far as I'm concerned, anyone signing up for either of those two services has abdicated all semblance of Privacy.
A Judith Vidal-hall is on Facebook, but provides no additional information to strangers. Despite the Slashdogma, it is possible to have a Facebook page and not spend your entire day posting your SSN and rapid status updates about what you ate for lunch and how it is propogating through your digestive system.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone making poorly educated sweeping generalizations based on bad stereotypes has abdicated all semblance of Trust on public forums.
"'Whether something is private or not should be up to the internet surfer, not Google. We are best placed to decide, not them.'"
Fulfilling the expectation that the internet surfer's privacy wishes are being honored is the job of a browser without security, not a massive corporation whose primary income source is targeted advertisements.
Apparently there is a facebook page where you can sign up to support this..
My ironyometer went off-scale when I saw that.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
That is not the default for FB and never was. You have to jump through hoops to set it up so that a small semblance of privacy (or more accurately the illusion of it) is maintained there. And every time they update something the privacy settings for that something is always "Show it to the whole wide world!"
Also, we aren't talking about what is shown to other users but what is shown and recorded forever and tracked by the company behind it. That was a nice bit of sleight of hand you did with that by the way. FB does record, aggregate and sell your user data no matter what your security settings.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Since when is Google storing a cookie on your local computer the same as Google collecting data on you. Collecting, by its very definition, would mean that they are storing the data on their computer. Now, if Google then harvests the data stored locally and does something with it, that is a different story, but just having Google store a cookie, does not in and of itself mean that they are collecting personal data, even if the cookie contains personal data. If that were the case, then just about every website you visit would be guilty of the same thing as almost all of them store cookies.
Here is another problem with the legal action being brought. It is being done so by somebody who knows and understands how computers work. Therefore, if you know that Google, or anybody else, is storing cookies and you allow it to persist, when your browser allows you to refuse cookies from certain sites, isn't their a form of contributory fault there? I'm not talking about John Q. Public, but a so called expert in the field (whether self proclaimed or not).
I know that you have a much more difficult time getting an insurance company to pay a claim for a valuable stolen item if it was left on the front seat of a car with the windows rolled down and the door unlocked. It doesn't mean that the person should have stolen it, but that you should have protected it. If that is accepted, then why would an "expert" in the field of computer security not be held to the same standard?
Yes if only there was some sort of policy regarding privacy that sites like Google would make public... Something that was easy to find, perhaps right on the bottom of every page. Something that said something like Privacy & Terms that you could simply click on to get information.
Is the link to that page also on every webpage that Google uses it's third-party cookies on?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.