US Appeals Court Voids Google 'Cookie' Privacy Settlement That Paid Users Nothing (reuters.com) 68
A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down Google's class-action settlement meant to resolve claims it invaded the privacy of millions of computer users by installing "cookies" in their browsers, but paying those users nothing for their troubles. Reuters reports: In a 3-0 decision, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said it could not tell whether the $5.5 million settlement was fair, reasonable and adequate, and said a lower court judge should revisit the case. Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, had been accused of exploiting loopholes in Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers to help advertisers bypass cookie blockers. The settlement approved in February 2017 by U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson in Delaware called for Google to stop using cookies for Safari browsers, and pay the $5.5 million mainly to the plaintiffs' lawyers and six groups, including some with prior Google ties, to research and promote browser privacy. But in Tuesday's decision, Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro said the settlement raised a "red flag" and possible due process concerns because it broadly released money damages claims.
Re: Couple of reasons why today's Internet is usel (Score:1)
I use NordVPN. They offered an app on the Google Play store that provided a DNS add blocker that actually worked on most websites. Google found out and made them disable the DNS add blocker or gtfo of the store. They chose ... a third option. The app in the Play store does have the DNS addblocker disabled but ... the app on NordVPN's own website still has it in and enabled (it can be enabled and disabled in the app) and Google can't do anything about it.
Google can't be trusted and isn't a safe company to do
What about Apple and Microsoft? (Score:2)
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Re:What about Apple and Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bullshit here, is that what Google did was just a naughty, naughty advertising thing, it absolutely was not. Citizens across the planet to active steps to protect their privacy. Google than choose to abuse the computyer network people were accessing and criminally bypass privacy protections people had put in place and illegally accessed their computers. By any definition of computer crime laws, Google commited a criminal act and hacked people's computers for profit by invading and selling the privacy.
If any idividual had done what Google had done they would be facing a years long custodial sentence, why aren't the POS fuckers at google who approved and did this, not facing criminal prosecution, they should be held fully accountable for computer crimes, abuse of a computer network, those POS's do not fucking own the internet, it is not theirs to abuse, they absolutely do not own your computer which they illegally accessed and abused.
Demand the criminal prosecution of Google executives for computer crimes.
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You can disable cookies entirely, you're still being tracked. You also need cookies for a lot of things to work. This is something people don't understand able cookies and tracking. They're not synonymous.
Other than not using the internet, there's virtually nothing you can do to not be tracked and to not have data collected about you. It's impossible
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Google lied about it in their privacy policy.
Cite?
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If any idividual had done what Google had done they would be facing a years long custodial sentence
What if an Internet advertiser did this, but the advertiser wasn't named "Google"? What would happen to them?
Be careful. It's a trick question.
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They shipped a supposedly secure browser that allowed the cookies to be stored as well...
There is nothing wrong with a secure browser allowing certain cookies to be stored as long as they are begin used for legitimate stuff like storing user specific site settings and preferences, the issue is what else is being done with them, i.e. tracking. Safari used to purge tracking cookies after 24 hours, but users now have to specifically opt in to tracking cookies on a site by site basis. What Google did was react to that by hacking those tracking prevention systems in order to ignore the stated wish o
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A secure browser isn't the same thing as an untrackable or anonymous browser anyway. Congrats, your cookies from a hundred sites are secure against hacking and spying, and no one knows which cookies are there except that particular site, by design.
Re:Wait, cookies are illegal now? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The only reasonable assumption is that they are doing everything that meets these criteria:
1) It makes them money
2) Any one of:
2a) It is perfectly legal.
2b) The believe they won't get caught
2c) They believe the settlement money will be less than the profit made, if they do get caught.
One notable criteria that is not, and will never be, considered:
3) It isn't evil.
What about Experian? (Score:1)
Since there is not enough money to pay the proposed $125/person, that settlement should also be voided.
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You mean Equifax?
Not like I think much better of Experian or Transunion, either.
Purpose of class action lawsuits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'm not in the US, but: what is the purpose of a class action lawsuit? Is the idea simply to levy a weird sort of fine?
If the idea is to compensate a large group of individuals who have been damaged in some way, how can any court approve a judgement (or settlement) that does not actually compensate the class? Moreover, how can it be acceptable for the attorneys' fees to soak up the lion's share of whatever agreement is reached? It's not the lawyers who need compensated.
It seems like a good thing, that this was overturned. The total amount is laughable, and anyway was diverted to some random "privacy groups" (a list of which I cannot find - bet: they are Google-associated groups). This seems as bad as those cases where the "damages" are paid in the form of coupons that make you buy more of the company's products.
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The purpose of a class action lawsuit is for lawyers to make a boatload of money.
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Ok, I'm not in the US, but: what is the purpose of a class action lawsuit?
The basic idea is that people feel mildly vindicated while not being made whole while corporations take a mildly inconvenient fine for negligence and go about their business. In the process lawyers get almost all of the money. Almost all of the lawmakers are lawyers so everybody is happy except the injured parties and enough of them aren't livid enough to do anything else.
The old Icelandic system used marketable torts, so if a large
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An intriguing idea.
You say that was the old Icelandic system, so presumably they've changed it. Were there legitimate problems with the situation they were trying to address? Other than effectiveness I mean...
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A class action is for cases where a large number of people have received a low amount of harm. The total amount of harm may be large but if each individual instance of harm would have been awarded damages much less than the effort of bringing the suit many cases would go uncontested thus creating an incentive for broad but shallow harms. By litigating the class as a whole you offset the effort of the suit against the total harm.
You see a lot of people here whining about the per-class member awards being sma
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>You see a lot of people here whining about the per-class member awards being small...
The point being, that the per-member awards are typically far smaller than the per-member harm done - even before the lawyers' fees are taken out. Meaning that the defendant was found guilty, and then fined a far smaller amount than the damage they did. A single-victim analogy would be if I stole your $20,000 car, was tried and found guilty of the crime, and ordered to pay you $2000 as restitution - $1800 of which wen
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Ok, I'm not in the US, but: what is the purpose of a class action lawsuit?
To enrich lawyers. The claim is it comensates for damage and improves things as business repairs harmful behaviors, but suits like this put the lie to that as the lawyers got paid but the supposed victims did not. This is not uncommon.
The lawyers get millions, the original handful of plaintiffs get a few tens of k each, and the millions of randos get a coupon for free fries the next time they visit Wendy's.
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To enrich lawyers. .
What Captain Dildo fails to mention is that most class-action lawsuits are lost or never go to trial. Like most millennial cunts, he just likes to complain without actually offering a solution to the problem. He'll simply bitch about the current, imperfect, solution.
Is the current system flawed? Sure. Do the lawyers sometimes make out like bandits? Sure. Do they always? Fuck no. They take on 100% of the risk by funding the lawsuit.
If they lose, the can't recover that money and they'll usually end up h
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The total amount is laughable, and anyway was diverted to some random "privacy groups" (a list of which I cannot find - bet: they are Google-associated groups)
From the ruling [justia.com]:
VPN (Score:1)