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发帖数: 3492 | 1 Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:32:14 PDT
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google and the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission are nearing a deal that would see Google paying a record $22.
5 million fine over its tactics to circumvent privacy settings in Safari on
iOS to track users' behavior.
The fine is expected to be the largest penalty ever levied on a single
company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It offers the latest sign of
the FTC's stepped-up approach to policing online privacy violations, coming
just six months after The Wall Street Journal reported on Google's practices.
The case centers on a loophole in Safari's default privacy settings, with
Google taking advantage of the hole to make the browser think that the user
was interacting with a given ad, thus allowing a tracking cookie to be
installed. With that cookie installed, it became easy for Google to add
additional cookies and to track users across the web as they visited other
sites displaying ads from Google's networks.
Google has argued that the tracking was unintentional and that it did not
harm consumers, but the Federal Trade Commission pointed to previous
statements by Google regarding Safari's privacy settings as evidence that
the company was misrepresenting its privacy practices.
Google's tactics are also under scrutiny from a number of state attorneys
general, who may yet pursue additional action against the company. |
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