FTC Reportedly Fining Google $22.5 Million Over Safari Privacy Abuse

New submitter Slashbots writes "Google will settle with the FTC for nearly $22.5 million over its bypassing of Apple's Safari browser privacy settings. It would be the largest settlement with the FTC over privacy-related charges ever. By abusing a privacy hole in Safari, Google circumvented user settings to show them advertising and track the user. 'Safari, unlike other browsers, blocks cookies from ad networks like Google's. But because of a loophole, Google had been able to avoid the block, as researchers discovered in February. It installed cookies and tracked Safari users across the Web to show them personalized ads.'"

Designated Felon

[Aqualung812]

The EPA already attempts to do this using what has been termed the "designated felon".

The idea is that if there are severe environmental damages, the company has to have someone designated as the person that will do jail time. The idea is that this person is in charge of setting and enforcing the policies that will keep her out of jail.
It even allows someone that violates the policies to be the one that serves jail time. In other words, the DF says "you must do this", and if you ignore that, you do the time.

However, this isn't enforced as much as it should be, and I'm not aware of any other use of this idea outside EPA regulations.

So Safari's privacy setting doesn't work as

[Scyber]

it is supposed to and Google gets fined? Shouldn't Apple also get fined? Submitting hidden forms is not an unknown concept in web development. Its not like Google hacked the users computer and changed the Safari settings. The settings were broken if they didn't block this. I'm not saying I agree with what Google was doing, I just think there were some serious issues with Safari's privacy settings if they allowed this in the first place.

I also don't think Google is the only company doing this. I actually had an interview with an ad company a few months back where they actually bragged about how they could track Safari users despite the default privacy settings. I never followed up on it, but I'd imagine it is something similar. I didn't take the job (for other reasons).

Re:Jail Time?

[ackthpt]

This thing of "We do something illegal, you fine us, everyone's happy" must stop. Somebody must serve some nice jail time (not much, say 6-12 months) and then maybe such fucked up practices would diminish.
This is like me breaking into someone's house, pissing and shitting all over the place, then paying a 5 dollar fine for doing so. Would that stop me in the future? Hell no.

Geez, you and your rational views. Don't you know the corporate veil protects all within? I mean, just because Corporations are People .. seriously, they're about as accountable for their crimes as an indigent doing to your house, what you describe. You're hosed, you won't get anywhere prosecuting them. The bank crisis made this painfully clear - so many little crimes done by committee, what can you do, put the committee in jail? Fines are about the only way to punish and usually only punishes those left behind, because the people who committed the actions are now off somewhere with their big bonuses.

I like the way they fine you in Germany .. it's based upon your ability to pay. It makes you really feel the pain. A rich guy gets drunk and drives across your lawn, he can be fined hundreds of thousands, because it's based upon his income or wealth, not some set, piddly amount. So we implement such a system and then pull back in the people who made these decisions and make them pay .. prevents making a mess and escaping, while others are left to clean up after you. Also encourages leaving your former place of business in good order, going concern looked after sorta thing.

Re:Okay, I'm glad to see this, but ...

[timeOday]

This is all so arbitrary. Oddly enough google's fine of $22.5 million is exactly 1000 times the fine of $22,500 [wikipedia.org] that US courts recently upheld as a reasonable fine for pirating songs - that's per song. So if we held "stealing" a user's surfing habits to be equivalent to "stealing" a copy of a song, google's fine would only cover the first 1000 affected users.

Re:Jail Time?

[geminidomino]

Supposedly it costs $70K per prisoner per year (hmm, I bet it depends where and what security level) so 22.5 million is 321 person-years of prison. That seems a little excessive since you can kill someone and only get a decade or so...

Not excessive at all when you consider that no one actually has to do the time, live with the felony conviction, etc...

A better comparison might be:

Google 2011 Revenues (Income): 37,905,000,000
Fine: 22,500,000
Fine as % of Income: 0.06%

Compare to a "comfortable" person making $100K
Gross Income: 100,000
Fine @ 0.06%: $60

Yeah, somehow I don't think that's much of a disincentive there...