Google claims ignorance over accusations of tracking users in Safari

Given the amount of fuss that Google has been making over its updated privacy policy recently – with endless reminders and notifications across their suite of products – you would expect them to have their house in order and operate above board. After all, it is the Google way to ‘do no evil’. But thanks to an independent researcher at Stanford, Jonathan Meyer, we can now see the extent to which Google will go to track users online. He discovered that Google were bypassing a block on the Safari browser, which is the default on iPhones and iPads and how most of us access the internet on those devices, to track users. Google were running this through their DoubleClick ad network.

The benefit of this to Google of course, is that it is enabling advertisers to access users through the data gathered, on sites that Google doesn’t own.The full extent of the study by Meyer can be found in his blog post where he released the findings

Without naming Google directly, Apple have said that they are aware of some third parties bypassing the block and are attempting to stop this. Google meanwhile, has said “We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.” They have also said that they’re not collecting personal information and that when they issued an update to Google products on Safari they did not “anticipate” that this tracking would happen.

Hard to believe that a company which has access to some of the smartest minds in computer science and has developed data collection practices over a number of years to benefit advertisers, didn’t expect a change would have an outcome like this.

Can Google afford this?

Financially, they probably can. This is Google. And if the FTC does launch an investigation as a result of this research then Google could face fines of $16,000 per violation, per day. At the moment we don’t know how many times Google executed this violation, but given the combined reach of Google and Apple products, it’s safe to say it will be a significant chunk of change. But it’s not going to empty Google’s coffers of course.

Whether they can afford yet another significant blow to their reputation is another question. At the end of 2011 they were embroiled in another privacy saga, with the FTC ruling that Google could no longer share user’s data outside of the organisation without clear and direct permission. A policy you would have liked to think Google operated anyway. That particular case stemmed from Google’s introduction of Buzz in 2010, which prompted complaints. So not only did Google have a spectacular failure on their hands with Buzz, but it dealt a serious blow to their reputation and to what extent we could trust them with our data.

For Google, this recent accusation is coming far too soon for them to be able to easily recover. And claiming ignorance over the outcome of their tracking is hardly getting them off to the best start in their defence.