12 Apple users in UK sue Google over Safari tracking

iPad mini promo (Smart Cover, launching Safari)

Although US District Judge Susan Illston recently approved the $22.5 million fine Google agreed to pay in order to settle the FTC claim that it illegally bypassed user privacy settings in Safari, the Internet giant is not yet off the hook over in the United Kingdom, where a group of twelve disgruntled users decided to take the search behemoth to the court over the scandal. A group called “Safari Users Against Google’s Secret Tracking” hired a law firm to file a complaint conveniently timed ahead of the sixth annual Data Privacy Day in the country…

According to a media release, lawyers allege that the search Goliath “breached their clients’ confidence and privacy” and are now seeking damages, disclosure and an apology from the company.

Google has a responsibility to consumers and should be accountable for the trust placed in them. We hope that they will take this opportunity to give Safari users a proper explanation about what happened, to apologise and, where appropriate, compensate the victims of their intrusion.

Google in February 2012 was caught intentionally overriding users’ privacy settings in Safari for OS X and iOS in order to, as Google argued, better track their web browsing activity. Google basically planted a tracking code fooling Safari into thinking its web tracking was user-approved.

This lawsuit is the first of its kind in the UK.

Did you find the Safari cookies scandal unsettling?

Do you support UK users in their legal fight against Google?