Google Caught in Red Tape

The FTC is investigating the web mogul, Google, after allegations that the company was skirting privacy settings on their Apple web browser, Safari.  Google signed a privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission last year and any breach of that settlement could cost as much as $16,000 per violation per day.

This is an issue because until very recently, there was a page on Google’s site that said all Safari users were protected from any tracking done by Google. If Google was indeed tracking all their customer’s web-browsing habits, that would be a violation of the FTC settlement which barred the company from misrepresenting their privacy settings.

Two advocacy groups, Consumer Watchdog and Electronic Privacy Information Center both charged Google with lying to their customers by telling them that they had complete control of the protection of their data when they were actually going around the setting themselves.

Google claims that the reason they bypassed the ‘no cookie’ feature on their Safari browser was to put social-networking buttons on their ads so that if someone liked an ad they could share it on Google+. Safari is the only browser to have a default security setting that prevented companies from placing ‘cookies’ on people’s computers but after Google breached the settings, their advertising network was able to track users’ web browsing.

With the sheer size and power of Google, it’s overwhelming to think about all the information this company is privileged to and all the things they could find out about you.