Google to Pay $17 Million to Settle Privacy Case

cold fjord writes "The New York Times reports, 'Google agreed on Monday to pay $17 million to 37 states and the District of Columbia ... The case involved Google's bypassing of privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser to use cookies to track users and show them advertisements in 2011 and 2012. Google has said it discontinued circumventing the settings early last year, after the practice was publicly reported, and stopped tracking Safari users and showing them personalized ads. ... the case is one of a growing pile of government investigations, lawsuits and punishments related to privacy matters at the company. They include cases involving a social networking tool called Buzz, illegal data collection by Street View vehicles and accusations of wiretapping to show personalized ads in Gmail. '" From the DOJ, the settlement (PDF).

Comments

violation of trust

[noh8rz10]

I'm still really upset that Google hacked my browser to install tracking beacons without my knowledge and against my expressed wishes. I think this is emblematic of how they do business and how lowly they think of their "users". I also uninstalled all the google apps from my iPhone after the tracker story from last week.

What's the alternative? Hopefully, this monoculture will be replaced with a rich mix of companies and options.

Re:violation of trust

[icebike]

4 hours worth of revenue, someone figured out.

Tax write off, cost of doing business, and all the money went to the lawyers.

$17 million out of $50 billion

[Anonymous Coward]

Google had $50 billion in revenues in 2012. If they use 3 significant figures, the fine rounds to $zero on their financial statements.

For those looking for a technical explanation

[antifoidulus]

TFA doesn't actually contain any details on how they did that, but (ironically) with the help of Google, I was able to find a page that details the process. The short answer is they took advantage of the fact that any form submitted from the browser to a site would allow that site to install cookies, so they added a hidden form submit to their ads.

They seem to be getting worse, rather than better.

[seebs]

And today I got a G+ event invitation to a suspended G+ account (they don't consider "seebs" a real name). Since it's suspended, I can't opt out of notifications or mailings, nor can I use the help forums to contact them. Or anything else, so far as I can tell.